by Christopher Harbin
A White House administrator recently spoke to a seminar that I’m in and floated by an interesting idea. Her idea was that universities should require candidates for the academy to have some public service experience in order to be considered. Personally, I think it’s a great idea — especially for law profs — who would most likely have to get a license to practice prior to entering the ivory tower. Hear that sound? That’s the sound of the professoriate screaming in terror. Even a year of experience in the real world could bring a much needed practical focus to law school curriculum. Perhaps hiring would stop centering on “what have you published?” to “what have you done.” Maybe it would funnel bright minds into public service where perhaps some would stay and innovate. Exciting idea.
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The Legal Satyricon 
I think this is an awful idea. The last thing we need in the academy are more fuckheads whining about public interest law. Candidates for the academy should have PRACTICAL LAWYERING EXPERIENCE. Maybe that could come in the form of public interest lawyering — and a certain percentage of law profs should come from that sector, but the legal academy is already chock full of shitheads who spent 14 months in the “public service project” at a Big Law Firm or who were public defenders until they realized that they couldn’t a) live on $30K a year, and b) hack working for a living.
To be fair, PDs have practical experience and at least argued some motions and talked to clients — which is far more than some of my profs have done. The idea that was floated by was requiring public service in their particular domain, so patent profs would have to do patent-related public interest, etc. This might not work for future enterprise organizations profs, but on the whole you’d get more experience. I think a lot of people conflate “public service” for “leftist” service and I’m not sure that’s exactly right.
I’m not saying that PD is not practical experience … oh hell no, it is about as real as experience can get.
What I am saying is that if the academy requires public interest experience, we’re going to wind up with a) the same lazy shits you have in the academy now, just biding their time in 16 month stints at the National Association of Crybabies before they can jump off to go apply for lawprof jobs. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the NAC just started a “pre-lawprof time-biding program.”
And .. of course “public interest” doesn’t mean “leftist” — in the dictionary. But, part of the reason I stopped donating to Georgetown’s Equal Justice Foundation is that those fellowships all, invariably, go to students who decide to take jobs working in leftist organizations. Not that I don’t donate directly to those same organizations, but I dislike the lack of balance.