A 1986 pool of first-year Harvard Law studentsindicated that 70 percent wanted to practicepublic-interest law. As Kahlenberg notes, barely ahandful entered the field when the class graduatedin 1989.
"Students enter law school because they want tobe like Atticus Finch...[but] at graduation mostgo to corporate law firms," says Kahlenberg,referring to the legal hero of Harper Lee's toKill A Mockingbrid.
There are a number of explanations for theexodus to corporate law: the quest for prestige,remarkable starting salaries compared with the lowpay in public-interest work, the difficulty ofgetting a job with a big public-interestorganization and the pressure to pay tuitionloans.
"I think that because of the cost of going tolaw school you're going to have to find a way ofbalancing the [desire] to help people and livingand surviving," says White. "Hopefully you canfind a way to do it."
A growing number of law school graduates arefinding they can't strike that balance andacknowledge being unhappy as lawyers.
According to a study prepared for the AmericanBar Association. the number of attorneysnationwide who say they are dissatisfied withtheir work grew by 25 percent from 1984 to 1990.The level of discontent is especially high amongthe lawyers who graduated from law school after1967.
Career counselors say most of thesedissatisfied lawyers had only vague notions of whythey decided to attend law school and did notadequately understand the rigors of a career inlaw.
Another generation of dissatisfied lawyerscould be only one effect of the stampede ofcollege seniors to law school.
The quiet conversion of students who see law asa vehicle for social change into highly paidcorporate lawyers is certainly noteworthy.
But perhaps more significant is whether thecontinued rise in the number of law studentsadversely affects academia and other fields.
"From my own experience, I am concerned thattoo many talented people are going into a fieldthat has talented people already," says AssistantProfessor of Government Thomas C. Ertman. "I justthink students should find out a bit more abouttheir choice."
"Undoubtedly, it would be much preferable ifsome people...were doing such things as teaching,"says Geoffrey R. Stone, dean of the University ofChicago Law School.
But Stone cautions that swelling ranks are notthe fault of the law profession. "it is the faultof how society values certain things."
Weisberg says the number of law students beganto rise 20 years ago as funding for academia beganto dwindle and demand for professors fell.
In the '60s, Weisberg says, "it was far moreattractive to go into the Ph.D. program. Law andmedical schools were seen as trade schools."
But today many talented people choose law overacademic. Weisberg says he decided to go to lawschool after spending six years as a professor ofEnglish during the "vague, directionlessspiritlessness" of the '70s.
There are about 700,000 lawyers in the UnitedStates today, nearly twice as many as 20 yearsago. There is one attorney in the country forevery 354 citizens.
But at least one of them believes that lawschool is not for everyone. Says Reavis, "It'svery depressing to see very talented people withvery creative minds going into professions wherethese talents won't be used."