Of Lawyers and Localism

2015-4-30 Lawyers img01I am currently attending law school. Among the topics of conversation which my friends and I regularly revisit, future plans rank near the top. My peers have come from far and wide, and have many different goals for their careers, but I am struck by the uniformity amongst us in one aspect of our plans: Nearly everyone plans to end up in a large center of power, such as New York or Washington, DC. A few want to go to San Francisco, and a few more to London or Beijing. I virtually never hear a friend say that they plan to live and work in a small town.

According to one of my law professors, this was not always so. It used to be the norm for law school graduates, even out of the nation’s top schools, to return to their hometowns following graduation. As well-trained lawyers and generally well-educated men and women, they could become leading citizens and pillars of local community. They would be surrounded by non-lawyers. Others in the town would look up to them, even while occasionally reminding them that a world-class education does not make anyone infallible. Within huge cities, this environment is flipped almost completely on its head. My peers, whether they go to work for private firms or government departments, will keep company mostly with other lawyers who have received similar educations. Their training will not distinguish them from the thousands of other newly-minted lawyers pouring into New York and D.C. every year. As for “pillars of local community,” such people rarely exist within great cities. The very culture of urban environments, within which people do not know the majority of those with whom they make eye contact, works against those who try to cultivate the sort of relationships common in close-knit towns.

Why such a shift among lawyers? Are they simply eager for the high salaries which only huge firms can provide? I think not. In the first place, even those law students aiming at public-interest work, which does not pay very much, are focused on major cities. In the second place, while some law students are no doubt hungry for money, the same was true fifty years ago, and huge firms did not attract so many students then. A better answer to the question lies in the centralization of power within modern culture. This is true of government power, but extends to economic and cultural power as well. Law students today truly believe that if you want to make a difference in the world, such is best accomplished from New York or D.C.

This is a strange phenomenon. It is strange that the actions of a lawyer or bureaucrat hundreds of miles away, whom I will never meet, could change my life in a far more fundamental way than the actions of my next-door neighbor whom I see daily. I would like to critique this claim in two ways. In the first place, positively: While a trend toward centralizing power does exist within our culture, it is exaggerated in the minds of my peers, and “local” actions still have great merit. In the second place, normatively: To the extent that the trend of centralization exists, it should be resisted.

On the positive claim, many law students discount the value of work done within a local, small-town context. They see a prestigious law degree as placing them, in a way, above that kind of work, because they have the credentials to work at a higher level. While I do not deny that positions in New York and DC should be filled by skilled and competent lawyers, the same is true of work within small towns. Great talent need not be “wasted” if exercised in a way that is less visible to the wide world. Injustice exists and should be fought at all levels of society, and often the most local actors are the ones best placed to recognize it. The idea that only those in centers of power can make a difference is simply not true, even within the modern world where power is admittedly more centralized than it used to be.

On the normative level, well-educated men and women ought to view centralization of power with suspicion. Whether sitting in government offices or law firm conference rooms, elites within centers of power simply cannot know everything about the problems they are tasked with solving. It is hard enough for a man to keep tabs on the lives of his five nearest neighbors such that he can help them when needed. Anyone who lives in a big city can attest to this (many do not even try). How, then, is any central planner going to keep tabs on the lives of thousands or millions? The flocking of highly trained lawyers and other professionals to centers of power exacerbates this problem. These intelligent and well-read people could get to know a town well enough to approach its problems perceptively and make a positive difference. When they try to know a nation well enough for the same task, even the brightest falter.

This is not to say that all law students should head for small-town America. We need good men and women in New York and D.C.; we just need them elsewhere also. Above all, the idea that talent is “wasted” on localized work must be rejected. A good mind can be put to excellent use in a humble county courthouse.

Reepicheep

About Reepicheep

For Reepicheep, life is an adventure, and the world is populated not by generic strangers, but by knights and ladies to befriend, sages to learn from, and villains to fight. Reepicheep has traveled far, and has seen the crown jewels of three empires and sunlight on the waters of seven seas, as well as someone more beautiful than all of those things put together. He also enjoys such simple pleasures as chocolate chip cookies and songs sung around a campfire.

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