Why the Law?: The Tensions of Public Interest Lawyering

-- By IsabellaMorales - 20 Feb 2025

Introduction

I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer when I was in middle school. After watching my dad, a criminal defense attorney, do the job for my entire life, I was of the opinion that lawyering was the path I needed to take to advance the values of compassion, justice, and equality that had been instilled in me. Now, after a year of law school, I am much less certain about the role that lawyering is capable of playing in advancing those values. Nonetheless, perhaps due to naive optimism or perhaps because there is really something here, I have chosen to continue down this path and deal with the tensions to try to make lawyering fit into my vision for the future.

The Contradictions of the Legal System

My initial concern with the legal field comes from my recognition that the legal system may not be the appropriate means to my desired end given that it was not built to uphold the values I care about. Despite being advertised as a system of “justice,” the purpose of the legal system is not justice. Instead, it is meant to preserve societal norms, some of which may be just, but many of which, especially in a nation built on white supremacy, are anything but.

Lawyers, though, by virtue of engaging with the law, must work within that system. In effect, this means that sometimes justice for our clients will contradict justice for society. For instance, I am interested in working in public defense, where these contradictions are numerous. Plea deals, for example, encourage defendants to admit guilt, whether it is true or not, to avoid risking the harsh (often unfair) punitive consequences that might otherwise result. These deals have become the norm in the criminal legal system and any competent defense attorney must acknowledge the benefits of a plea deal compared to the risk of going to trial when advising their clients. However, anytime a person accepts a plea deal where it is not warranted, the state is able to wrongly exert its power without challenge. Helping a client get a plea deal, then, puts me in the middle of an unjust system, in direct contradiction to my personal moral values.

I’m not entirely sure how to reconcile this, but there are a few places I might start. First, being a lawyer is only one piece of my life. I can choose to engage in other forms of resistance outside of my advocacy for my clients, which can transcend the boundaries of the legal system. At the same time, through my work in the legal field, I can do my best to help individuals escape particular injustices. This isn’t a perfectly satisfactory answer, for it is one in which I presume that the larger systems of injustice will remain standing. Nonetheless, I think that, for now at least, that presumption is necessary, and I should do what I can to minimize the negative impacts of such a system.

Second, there are ways to use the law which don’t support the system as it currently exists. There are public defenders who take a holistic approach to criminal defense, seeking to address the problems that their clients face beyond the particular instance that brought them into contact with the legal system. There are lawyers who support social movements through “movement lawyering” to ensure that the people who are trying to make lasting change have the legal support that they need to do so. I’m sure the list goes on, though I’ve yet to discover all the forms creative lawyering can take. The point is, I don’t have to be confined to the boundaries of lawyering set out by the legal system.

Navigating Legal Education

It is precisely those boundaries that bring me to my second concern with the legal system, which is that the interests of legal education, particularly at an institution like Columbia, do not support the aforementioned outcomes. This leads me to believe that the legal profession itself is a constraining force to achieving the just future I wish to live in.

Although there are many micro-problems within legal education that contribute to this conclusion, the largest problem is that, because lawyering is often advertised to young people as the appropriate forum to funnel our energies towards creating change, a decent number of people who are interested in making change come to law school. Unfortunately, though, once they arrive, the micro-problems (i.e. competitive grades, the financial drain of law school, the financial lure of Big Law, the lack of intellectual exploration, etc.) stop any such change in its tracks. Thus, people who would have been very valuable to any movement for change, are disarmed and, sometimes, mobilized against such change. As an individual who wants to be part of those movements, it is worrying to see potential allies drop off because of the constraints of law school.

There isn’t an easy solution, especially not as a singular law student. I can try to maintain community and conversation with my classmates so that we each understand that we are not alone in carving a different path out of law school for ourselves. Additionally, perhaps, once I am a lawyer, I can use my position to educate new law students. And, of course, I can remain steadfast in my personal path that does not accept these constraints. Even so, this nature of the legal profession leaves me weary of my place in it as a whole.

Closing Thoughts

That said, although I am not the optimistic 12-year old I once was, I think that I am better equipped to do this job now that I have begun to grapple with its complexities. The legal system is not going to change overnight (at least not in the direction I desire), so I must be aware of the challenges I may face as I move forward if I wish to ever do anything about them.

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