PROFESSIONALISM IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Stephen Wizner and Dennis Curtis¹

Inspired by a course offered by Professor Gary Palm at the University of Chicago, we coteach a seminar designed to encourage and assist law students to prepare pro bono projects to be carried out during their first few years in private practice. In Palm's words, developing a pro bono plan before graduation from law school can "make it easier for a young law firm lawyer to follow through with a commitment to public service at a time when she is trying to adjust to a new career and is likely to be expected to work extremely long hours." ²

We assign materials on legal ethics and professional responsibility, the public service obligation of the bar, access to justice, and mandatory pro bono. The materials lay out the debates about these subjects, so that class discussions can be had without the assumption that pro bono service, especially mandatory pro bono, is universally perceived as a public good.

We invite practicing lawyers from the private and public interest sectors to attend seminar meetings to share with the students their experiences with pro bono legal representation, to discuss strategies for carrying out pro bono work while in private practice, and to describe the economics and culture of firm practice.

We conceive of this seminar as an "advanced legal ethics" course, with specific pro bono plans as the "term papers." We help students design projects based on their interests (rather than taking pro bono assignments from a menu offered by a law firm). Students are required to research the particular field in which they propose to offer their services to low income clients. Before graduation, students must also contact legal aid and other public interest programs in the area where they plan to practice. We help the students negotiate with legal service providers to arrange for referral of cases, and with their law firms for time, credit toward billable hours and financial support for their projects. The upshot is that, as entering associates, students bring clients with them, but nonpaying ones.

After teaching this course for three years, and modifying it as we go along, what can we say to others who would like to teach a similar course? Changes to the syllabus have mainly occurred in two areas -- we have added materials about life as an associate in large law firms, and increased somewhat the materials on legal ethics. Since most of the students who take the course will be going to large law firms, firm culture, especially with respect to pro bono work, automatically becomes a prime subject for conversation in the classroom. We added the ethics material primarily to make sure that all of the students start off on the same page with respect to some to the core ethical rules and concepts.

In summary, the course is primarily about legal ethics, professional responsibility and the legal profession, with a specific focus on the provision of legal services to the poor. In our view, it has an added "practical" objective of focusing students' attention on the maldistribution of legal services and their ability and responsibility to do something about it.

¹Stephen Wizner is William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law; Dennis Curtis is Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School.
²Gary Palm, a MAPP [Major Anti-Poverty Pro Bono Project Plan] unpublished manuscript on file with the authors.