My favorite parts are journalist Henrik Nilsson's interviews with a rural practitioner and a UCLA law student interested in rural practice. Here's the excerpt about the former, Darryl E. Young, who practices in Merced:
As tuition prices have gone up, the cost of living is much lower, especially in rural counties. So salaries are usually lower as well. It's very difficult for attorneys starting in a rural area because they have a lot of debt. And your potential income is usually a lot lower.And then there is a quote from a long-established attorney in Kings County, the state's most acute legal desert. Michael Dias says
We've not had any problem getting qualified individuals come and practice here in King's County. ... In our practice, we don't see a lawyer shortage.Easy to say for the guy who is fat and happy off the limited practice in Kings County, which is lucrative for him, presumably representing rich ranchers. You see that everywhere: the message that the existing rural lawyers are doing fine. No time for or acknowledgement of the people who can't afford them or who are not being served by them.
Nilsson also tracked down a UCLA law student, Christopher Galeano, who is interested in practicing in a rural part of LA County, in the Palmdale/Lancaster area.
Many students often say they want to first pay off their debt and then go and do the work they want to do. So essentially, they say "Let me go get this high-paying job and pay all this debt that I owe, and then I'll go do that work." I have gone through that experience as well. I've taken on some debt to go to law school, and I didn't get that awesome financial aid package or scholarship that pays my whole tuition or something like that. ... UCLA and other schools in the UC system are publicly funded. Those dollars are also tax dollars from rural communities, and they do come from folks who need legal services one way or another.It's an important perspective that Galeano offers.
Oh, and don't miss the quote from me (including my honest opinion that law school--especially in California--is way to expensive and the contrasting/responsive quote from Dean Jennifer Mnookin of UCLA Law states, among other things,"I think there's a perception that larger metropolitan areas may offer more career mobility down the line." I want to focus on "perception." I mean, Mnookin is probably right not only re perception, but reality. But shouldn't we be resisting both and re-defining success? Isn't that an appropriate and key role for legal educators in this age of burgeoning inequality?
1 comment:
This is a great post about a huge problem we have discussed throughout the semester (I especially like it because it mentions a Merced lawyer!) A particularly important part, to me, comes at the end when discussing "mobility" and "success" that comes from working in metropolitan areas. As you point out, the legal field desperately needs to redefine what "success" is. This is especially troubling to me because a lot of students are accepted to law school under the premise that they want to help people in need but abandon those ambitions in favor of chasing "success" (and money). Unfortunately, rural communities suffer because of this and the legal field is doing little to help fix this.
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