To those of you who hope to pursue public interest careers: You have chosen an incredibly valuable, but difficult road to travel. This is admirable, but you need to deal with some cold realities:
Each year, an impressive number of students in each law school's first-year class (as high as 30%) state that their goal is to attain a public interest job. And each year, a ridiculously low number of students graduating from most law schools (usually 1-3%) actually go into public interest employment. There are many factors contributing to that result: Most jobs are in the private sector and it is difficult to find employment in public interest organizations. Moreover, at most law schools, the vast majority of on-campus interviews are conducted by medium to large-sized law firms, so it's often up to individual students to track down the public interest jobs; meanwhile, the pressure to take any job grows and grows. Money is a big issue: public sector jobs pay low salaries and many students find themselves face-to-face with a huge debt to pay off. Prestige factors in as well: to many people, the status and salary of a big law firms equate with prestige, and to take a different direction, you must have a high degree of confidence in your definition of success. There is enormous peer pressure in law school to go to large law firms.
You'll have to fight those forces. It's important to know that you won't be alone. Law school job placement offices are increasingly sensitive to the need to provide more help about public interest alternatives. When you choose which schools to apply to, pay attention to this issue. Also, there are a few publications that may be helpful, which are listed at the end of this memo.
I encourage you to expand the usual definition of "public interest." By that term, most people have in mind jobs in nonprofit organizations that advance a particular cause or ideal: improving public education, protecting the environment, advising homeless families or people with AIDS, serving the legal needs of poor people, advancing the rights of people of color, women, and people with disabilities - just to name a few.
Outside of that narrow definition, there are other career choices that also serve the public interest and may be worth considering. What about working for a municipality or state government which is struggling to provide the very services for which those nonprofit organizations advocate? What about working in a smaller law firm which provides a wide range of services to the people of a particular community - wills, contracts to purchase small businesses, custody disputes, criminal representation, etc.? What about clerking for a judge whose decisions affect the lives of all those who appear before him or her?
I believe that a person committed to a "public interest" career may derive as much satisfaction in those settings as she or he would in the more narrowly-defined public interest arena. The choices are not limited to choosing between an enormous law firm on Wall Street and a tiny nonprofit organization.
To muddy the waters even further, it's worth pointing out that attorneys who practice in the larger law firms often serve the public interest as well. For example, they often provide free legal representation to, and serve on the boards of, nonprofit public interest organizations. Nothing is black and white about the practice of law.