A few days ago, amidst my crazy studying for final exams (which I have finally finished!), I ran across this simple, yet immensely poignant “Letter to a Law Student Interested in Social Justice,” by Professor Bill Quigley. Now, I’m not a law student, but I hope to be sometime in the next few years. And, the letter truly touched me. If I could, I’d rewrite every portion of the letter here - because it was just that inspiring and enlightening. But I can’t, and so I’ll focus on a few portions that really spoke to me. In the letter, Quigley says:
Advocates who do not create time for regular reflection can easily become angry and overwhelmed and bitter at the injustices around and ultimately at anyone who does not share their particular view about the best way to respond.
This is so true. When you start thinking about critical issues and social change, and when you get consumed in all the grand ideas of how messed up the world is and what you can do to help - everything else starts to seem a bit more trivial. You start to get really angry when you see people constantly striving to become millionaires, or just trying to climb the corporate ladder. It starts to become extremely frustrating to witness people obsessed with acquiring material possessions and fame.
This is happening to me. For the past week or so, this feeling has been intensifying, as I keep wondering: Why don’t people care more? There are so many ongoing atrocities around the world: conflict, torture, poverty. When there is so much to be done, how can people sit idle? It’s started to make me angry, because I just don’t think it’s right.
True, society is changing, and it’s changing for the better. Every day more people are dedicating time and effort to public service, and the nonprofit industry is becoming mainstream. Social enterprises are pulling talent in with fresh, innovative ideas and business models. But at the end of the day, it’s frustrating to still see so much greed everywhere.
Let’s face it - society’s priorities are completely screwed up. Who said it was okay to have prestige defined by the number of zeroes in your salary, the brand names in your closet, or the cars in your driveway? Why is it considered “cool” to live extravagantly, to have all the latest gadgets? Why does society define people by what they own, and not who they are? We all have our priorities wrong when money and possessions and fame become more important than integrity, humility, passion, and dedication. Prestige needs to be defined by what’s in a person’s heart, by compassion and goodness, and by dedication to a mission larger than yourself - passion for what you do, and passion for changing the world.
This is one of the problems with law school. In his letter, Quigley describes how students enter law school with the desire to help others. Bright eyed and imbued with idealism, they hope to use their legal skills to defend those who need it most. But 2/3 of those who enter law school with interest in government or public sector jobs do not end up in that line of work. Quigley quotes a student who said: “The first thing I lost in law school was the reason that I came.” Why? Because law - and thus, law schools - ultimately isn’t about justice, or upholding some noble ideal. When it comes down to it, much of the legal profession is about making money. He writes:
Unfortunately, the experience of law school and the legal profession often dilute the commitment to social justice lawyering. The repeated emphasis in law school on the subtleties of substantive law and many layers of procedure, usually discussed in the context of examples from business and traditional litigation, can grind down the idealism with which students first arrived. It pains me to say it, but justice is a counter-cultural value in our legal profession. Because of that, you cannot be afraid to be different than others in law school or the profession – for unless you are, you cannot be a social justice lawyer.
There’s the key point - in order to care about others, and want to make a difference in others’ lives - you’re automatically different. This is true for law school, but it’s also true in business school, and for society as a whole. Why is it that if you actually care, you have to be different? An anomaly? Shouldn’t the desire to better the world be something normal? Something admirable, something to aspire to?
But it’s not. I don’t blame individuals for chasing success or money. When society values something, it’s natural for people to gravitate towards that. Not everyone knows what their true passion is, but it’s often because they haven’t been exposed to all the career paths out there, and so turn to society’s conceptions of what to do as a rough guideline. Well, that guideline is skewed, and it needs to be changed.
That’s why before we can help “change the world,” we have to change ourselves. As you, and I, and others one by one decide to go against the grain and work to improve the world we live in, society will undergo a shift. Someday, it’ll become more normal for law schools to emphasize human rights law or public defense. Someday, I’ll have to hope that working on criminal justice reform or microfinance will be as prestigious as being an investment banker or corporate lawyer. We’re not there yet, but I hope someday we will be.
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