Yet educators, students and even private practictioners worry that for too many nascent lawyers, such commitment ends after graduation.

"At one time, clinical programs were influencing people, and had a substantial impact," says Robert L. Hill, Aetna Life and Casualty's assistant vice president for law and public affairs. "But now people are on the `fast track' and say, `too much work to do, have to get ahead, have to pay back student loans.' So they're not doing as much pro bono as they used to."

Some, including Steven B. Deutch, pro bono coordinator at Foley, Hoag and Eliot, attribute the plunge in public service to recent societal complacency and "yuppie" attitudes.

"Law students frequently get involved, but it's not as popular as it was 10 or 15 years ago," says Deutch, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1974. "When we graduated, we were very interested in pro bono work. But that seems to be less true now, because there's been a societal change. Then, the Vietnam was was closer at hand. Now, more people are satisfied with their economic condition."

With recruitment visits from high-paying firms always the topic of fall campus conversation, few schools can overpower the lures of lucrative corporate work, experts say. Harvard's clinical instructors note that most of the 6 percent who actually pursue full-time public service probably had that career in mind before they came to law school.

"I think what encourages people is nothing they gain from being here, but attitudes they come in with," says Cassandra Q. Butts, a second-year student at Harvard. "And people often come in with an interest in public interest, but with the emphasis here on corporate law, they don't always leave with that attitude. There's heavy recruiting by large, high-paying firms, and students see an insurmountable number of loans they need to pay off."

For many, those kind of practical disincentives work against the commitment to public service. High loan payments and a lack of experience in common pro bono fields discourage young attorneys from taking the extra effort to provide the poor with legal aid.

"There are a couple of practical considerations you have to take into account," says Martha N. Murdock, pro bono director for the Massachusetts Bar Association. "Poverty law is not straightforward or uncomplicated, so someone straight out of law school may not have the experience to handle complicated poverty law cases."

And when it comes to encouraging associates to do public service litigation, students and lawyers say many large firms just will not sacrifice the time.

"An associate usually goes into a corporate law firm that probably has no less than 150 lawyers, but generally doesn't have that much control over what they do as far as pro bono work," Butts says.

Law firms often have official policies governing the proportion of time their attorneys can spend on pro bono work. According to Butts, although those figures occasionally reach 10 or 11 percent, they usually lie between 1 and 3 percent.

In fact, some flatly refuse to pay their lawyers for pro bono work.

"If the caseload is very, very high and the firm is not receptive to taking pro bono cases, it's hard for lawyers to do pro bono," Murdock says. "It's not just a question of the lawyer's attitude."

"Most firms don't include pro bono work when they figure their billable hours," Butts adds. "So the associates who do it are taking on a bigger chore than their colleagues. That's a huge disadvantage."

Although most agree that the firms encouraging volunteer legal work do so for philanthropic reasons, skeptics say that most of those firms simply want to supply themselves with well-trained litigators at little risk.