A third-year student at Harvard Law School says she has an obligation to take the talent that God has given her to serve the poor. But because of the financial security offered by a job in the private sector, she says she feels a lot of pressure to join the corporate world.

She is not alone with this dilemma.

Many students expecting to graduate from the Law School next spring hope to follow their ideals of ethical responsibility and public service, but the very real gaps in salary, stability and availability between public and private sector positions make such a decision extremely difficult.

Despite the efforts of the Law School to open up as broad as possible a job spectrum to their graduates, students with huge loans to repay and much insecurity about their future stability find lucrative law firm positions tempting, and, in many cases, irresistible.

June Thompson, the director of placement at the Law School, says that of 513 members of the Class of '84, 14 were involved in public interest and legal services, 25 were working for federal, state or local government, 110 were doing judicial clerkships and 353 were working for law firms or corporations. Statistics for the class of 1985 were not available, she says.

Statistics show that the problem is similar, if not worse, at other Law Schools. Says Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of law, "The situation is somewhat better at Harvard. Our students have slightly more options open to them."

Melanie R. Kersey, the adminstrator of the National Association for Law Placement in Washington D.C., compared the national figures for the Class of '74 and the Class of '83. Over the nine years the percentage of graduates in public-interest fields dropped from 5.3 to 3.1, those in government dropped from 16.2 to 11.5 and those in private practice, business and industry rose from 61.4 to 71.2 percent, she says.

Tim S. Robinson, the editor-in-chief of the National Law Journal in New York City, says the trend is a serious problem. "I believe law schools should put more emphasis on training law students for the public sector. Lawyers should remember it's their duty to make the legal profession as accessible as possible to all members of society and not just to the rich. More emphasis should be placed on law as a responsible profession than as a business."

"The major problem is that students don't think they have a choice," says Dershowitz. "Many think realistically available. Thus, the best and the brightest end up serving those elite who need them least. They end up spending far too much time serving the needs of the very wealthy, and don't do enough on behalf of those people who are traditionally under-represented in our society."

According to Thompson, the major factor is the increasing gap in salaries. She says that graduates taking private sector jobs earn starting salaries of as much as $75,000 a year, while those in public service jobs start with as little as $14,000 to $20,000.

Dershowitz agrees, "Many students finish here with enormous debts. As a result, they feel the need to go where the big bucks are right away. Often, that critical gap between the salaries is just that amount the student owes."

Tactics

Law School administrators and students are using a number of tactics to draw students away from high-paying private sector jobs, but they do not appear to have succeeded in creating a large-scale shift to the public sector.

Renda G. Johnson, the Law School's director of financial aid, says her office is making an effort to relieve the financial burden of loan repayments for graduates who choose public service or other lowpaying careers.

Over the last seven years, the office has offered an option known as the a Low Income Protection Plan, under which graduates are provided with interest-free loans or "forgiveness," to help them live with heavy Law School debts, she says. The Law School will "forgive," or repay, the difference between the loan repayments due and the percentage of income that the graduate is required to pay, she says.