00:00:00.009 - 00:01:31.349

Welcome everybody. This is our group of honorary fellows who've gone on to honor us, and the profession by their subsequent work, and this event is part of bringing all of you back to sort of reflect on

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what's gone on in the years since you won the awards. Needless to say, the University of Pennsylvania Law School has had a series of other public interest first and activities. First law school to establish a public service requirement and establish a public service

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program. Leading the applause is Colin Diver, he needs applause as well. Colin and Toby, needless to say, were very instrumental along with Howard Lesnick in nurturing that program for a number of years, but obviously public interest activities of the faculty,

00:02:12.080 - 00:02:33.679

the clinical program, Penn has really been actively involved both professionally and symbolically in public service. Needless to say, by holding our, as part of our centennial celebration, this roundtable as well as the Sparer Conference on social movements

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and law reform, again we're showing the importance of public interest to the law school and the legal profession. I just, to get in a note, this is part of the law school sesquicentennial year. We've had 2000 alumni back for a

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major sesquicentennial celebration where we dedicated a building, there have been a series of lectures during the year, but they culminate in this event. I do want to also note that in having you back, we have honored

00:03:08.779 - 00:03:30.139

you, the honorary fellows, but needless to say returning and participating you are honoring this law school. We appreciate everything. And we appreciate your coming to take part in this roundtable today. In any event, I wanna turn the festivities over to Dave Rudovsky who really doesn't need no introduction

00:03:30.139 - 00:03:57.979

but one of the significant public lawyers in the country today. Also, from our perspective, faculty. David is going to preside over this event. So without further ado, let me give you David. Michael, thanks and welcome and welcome back. I'm

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not gonna spend any time introducing and letting you know what people have done here. You've all been given a booklet concerning the weekend's activities, and in the booklet there are biographical descriptions of all the honorary fellows and what they've done. I think they'll fill in

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and you'll notice by the remarks what fields they've been active in. I think suffice it to say each of them brings a wealth of information and experience concerning public interest law, public interest advocacy over the past 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 years. Some people who have been

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involved in this activity and movement. And we have a broad range. We have people involved in the criminal justice system. We have people involved in providing legal services for the poor. We have people involved in specific areas immigration, housing, education, criminal justice, and so on. And

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what we are hoping to do today is really two things. First, to take a look back. But not a long look back and not to spend too much time dwelling on the past, but to see where we are today, the year 2001, after 35,

00:05:09.880 - 00:05:23.209

40 years of public interest activity, what are some of our successes, what are some of our failures, what went right, what didn't go right? If we were going back to 1965, if we're all sitting here and we thought, what is the year 2001 going to look

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like and we made that prediction. Are we right? Are we wrong? Are we happy? Are we unhappy about where we are? But building on that, the next thing we want to do and spend most of our time on, I hope, is projecting into

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the future, building on what we've seen, and the way we've acted and the work we've done in the past 30, 35, 40 years, what can we do to make the kind of changes that have to be made given the political and legal

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climate of the year 2001 to further kind of the common interests of the public interest law movement. And I think it's, there's almost a marker here that the Supreme Court laid down yesterday when the court decided, you know, amazingly 5 to 4 on one of the

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most offensive regulations that Congress has probably passed or statutes that Congress has passed, and that says a lot in the last 25 or 30 years, but that the public interest community has to think, well, we had a victory right in getting back some of the authority

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for legal services, even if it's only a small slice of legal services. Authority in terms of the way legal services can conduct litigation in this country, more on the equality with everybody else who conducts litigation, but I think it's a marker and a statement that on

00:06:38.752 - 00:06:52.946

the one hand we're pleased that we were able to squeak by by a 5 to 4 decision by the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds, striking down this statute as offensive to the First Amendment. On the other hand, what kind of victory is it really and

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what does it mean for us that it takes that kind of litigation just really to get us back to start right on the on the monopoly board, on the go board, just to get back to the starting position. And so I think that that kind of

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speaks volumes as to both where we've been and perhaps where we have to go. Just as one other comment just in terms of background. Setting this in context, we think back 1965, 1970, maybe earlier when some of our panelists were actually involved,

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and we look now to the year 2001, and it's easy today to think about some of the failures, some of the successes we didn't have, some of the things we thought we would achieve, but we haven't. On the other hand, the landscape has changed remarkably.

00:07:38.619 - 00:07:57.209

1965, I was in law school. I graduated in 1967. I think back to that time. In 1965 we first had a legal services organization in this country, right? Congress in 1965 passed the Legal Services Act providing federal funding. Before that there was virtually no legal

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services for the poor. There were legal aid societies but provided almost no services. It was 3 or 4 years after Gideon. The public defender movement was in its infancy. We had virtually very few public defenders around the country. We

00:08:12.630 - 00:08:32.099

had almost no specialized legal services or public interest programs. When we look at the field today and we see just in Philadelphia for example a juvenile law project, an education law project, a woman's law project, a public interest center, a vast variety of specialized organizations. Back

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then 1965, what do we have? There was the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. There was the ACLU with one national attorney, I think, and one assistant. There was really very, very few lawyers or law students involved in public interest advocacy. The numbers have grown. The programs have

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grown. The question is why haven't the changes we sought to make also been accomplished? So with that as a start, let me ask the broad question, and what I'd like people to do is give short remarks. We're gonna interrupt if

00:09:06.390 - 00:09:17.880

if you feel that you have to. I'll try to get everybody involved. The problem here is you've got 20 fairly high powered people. We've got 2 hours. Howard Lesnick mentioned to me that gives them each 4 minutes, which is really a task, but we'll

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try to be fair in this timing. So let me start this way. Danny Greenberg, I mean I pick you you because you probably have the most courage. Here's a guy who goes from Harvard Law School, a number of years ago where

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he was head of the clinical program, to the head of legal aid in New York City at the very time that Mayor Giuliani is trying to totally gut that organization. He walks into that with his eyes open. His eyes are still open, and he's

00:09:42.520 - 00:10:04.030

going to outlast Mayor Giuliani. But Danny, you've been involved in this business for a long time. Looking back over the past 25, 30 years, just in broad scope, some of our successes and some of our failures. 4 minutes, huh? Let's start

00:10:04.030 - 00:10:19.729

with the fact that in the 1960s, I think on the negative side, nobody could have imagined that the Legal Services Corporation funding would pretty much be at the same level that it was then and now. I think there was just a sense that the government had

00:10:19.729 - 00:10:34.900

broken the ice, one lawyer for every 10,000 poor people. This was just gonna grow the way the rest of the budget grew. There would be more and more lawyers. The other thing on the negative side is there's no loss of irony that it's the Brennan Center

00:10:35.330 - 00:10:51.369

named for Justice Brennan, who wins the Velazquez case when Justice Souter changes his vote from Rust versus Sullivan to this side in Velazquez. It is almost mind-boggling for those of us who went to the law school in the 60s or earlier that you would reach

00:10:51.369 - 00:11:05.349

a day when William Brennan, who was sort of the middle of the court. the Black and Douglas who were really good. And then there was Brennan who was sort of OK, but he wasn't an absolutist on freedom of speech. He wasn't just off the charts on what he

00:11:05.349 - 00:11:20.669

believed. He was a very good, solid, middle of the court justice who we liked a lot. And the notion that we're walking around saying thank God for Souter is almost unbelievable. I feel like I have a cause of action for bait and switch against my law

00:11:20.669 - 00:11:35.309

school. It wasn't what I signed up for. So, you know, in that way, the world has changed in ways that you're just kind of struggling to stay in place. The other side though, to put in the global terms, what makes you feel like you could go

00:11:35.309 - 00:11:50.619

on, is a tiny story, for the rest of my minute, is that my wife, who was of a generation where at Yale, she was one of the first women students and under Title IX. She sued along with others to get equal sports facilities for women at

00:11:50.619 - 00:12:09.049

Yale. She did that and literally only a generation later, my two daughters wear t-shirts. One says, forget about the dolls, pass me the ball. And the other one says, games real girls play, and crossed out is jump rope, crossed out is dolls, crossed is jacks.

00:12:09.049 - 00:12:27.010

And on the other side is baseball, soccer, basketball, and all the rest. We have a revolution that we don't even understand, that we just take for granted. And while we lament the changes that haven't taken place in so many areas of life, it is

00:12:27.010 - 00:12:50.140

just different. I think in some parts because of courageous lawyers that help formulate people's movements, move them forward, then follow those moves. That it's an exciting time to be and my great fear is that when people like us talk to students, messages that get heard are

00:12:50.380 - 00:13:06.775

your greatest mistake was you were born too late. All the victories have been won. The court is terrible. There's nothing left to do, and that's far from us energizing and far from us saying that this is an exciting time precisely because in the ebbs and flows,

00:13:07.114 - 00:13:20.515

things look bad, that you get a message that somehow we were all pretty lucky to be born when we were. My final message is, I assure you, nobody in the beginning of the legal services movement or in the public defender movement walked around saying, God, what

00:13:20.515 - 00:13:40.359

a great time to be poor in America. This is just so exciting. What a good time to be a lawyer there's so much you can do. Well, let me turn there, Margaret Burnham. There's a startling success in terms of young women. Athletics right, obviously part of public interest advocacy, a change in culture,

00:13:40.440 - 00:13:56.130

a change in ideas. What about the criminal justice system? 35 years ago, Gideon came down. The Warren Court was active in terms of criminal procedure issues. A lot of cases that seemed that was going to turn that system around. I think you go

00:13:56.130 - 00:14:11.724

back then there were 200,000 people in jail. Right now we have 2 million people in jail in this country, in prisons in this country. I want to ask Millard also because it deals with the death penalty. Many of them of color. Disparate numbers for sure on

00:14:11.724 - 00:14:39.190

a lot of levels. Success, failure, public interest movement have any impact on that? Well, if this is what success looks like then I don't want to see failure. Well I guess I'm speaking to the girls' side of the table. Right a self-segregated system here. See how far we've gone. Right. The girls who don't jump rope. Just to say as a graduate of

00:14:39.190 - 00:15:05.239

this law school, I graduated from law school in 1969. When we were in school, the world was open to us. The legal world. The thirteenth amendment was wide open. There were huge possibilities and huge opportunities to make change or so we

00:15:05.239 - 00:15:29.909

thought. So Howard Lesnick told us anyway when we were in law school. And so it was a great time to get committed to public interest. And a great place to have done that and so now having given three of my minutes to Penn Law School ra-rah, let me say that

00:15:29.909 - 00:15:51.929

clearly on the criminal justice front, whether mistakes can be laid at the foot of the legal of our public interest movement, of legal service. of our failures in perhaps combining the effort to get civil and criminal legal services

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in some way united, I mean that that was a failure that dates back to the initial period when legal services first began with Reginald Heber Smith. Maybe perhaps that division has something to do with the notion that rights should be conceived

00:16:11.559 - 00:16:32.419

differently in the criminal context than in civil context. Clearly race has a huge role to play and the inability of our movement fully to engage with the meaning of race for the denial of justice on all fronts has a huge role to play in the fact that we

00:16:32.419 - 00:16:50.059

have descended to the depths on criminal field and not quite [inaudible] Ok. Millard, I'd like you to address that same question. Millard Farmer has done remarkable work in terms of advocacy on behalf of people on death row in institutions

00:16:50.059 - 00:17:02.890

and so on, the criminal justice system. Millard, some comments on again where we are today as opposed to 30 years ago. And then Andre, I'd like you to follow up perhaps on this race question. Millard. I think if you're going to practice

00:17:02.890 - 00:17:18.060

law, I just can't imagine. I can't see what it's worth if you don't do public interest work. I mean, I think you're wasting your time with a law degree if you don't put a big chunk of it into doing public interest work. And I

00:17:18.060 - 00:17:32.420

think if you're going to do public interest work and you're going to keep your head screwed on, you've got to live every day like this is the worst day in the history of this civilization and there are so many changes that have got to take place

00:17:32.420 - 00:17:51.969

from here. And if you look back at accomplishments, changes or accomplishments I don't think you can be good today. I think you have to look at today like this is hard. This is terrible. And I think you also have to look at it like a person

00:17:51.969 - 00:18:10.780

walked in our office last week, delivery person at the Federal Express, I think, and said, who do y'all sue? And we said, well, it's just not anybody we don't sue. And, and I think you have to look at it like you can sue public interest groups,

00:18:11.060 - 00:18:31.560

you can differ with public interest groups because what you're doing is trying to every way possible affect change. And the only way you affect change is feel in your heart that it's wrong. And once you feel in your heart it's wrong, all the other motivations just

00:18:31.560 - 00:18:44.670

fall into place and you don't ask these questions, how far have we've been, and you don't ask how far are we going. It's just, what are we going to do with this issue. Alright, well, I want to come back to how we changed some hearts of

00:18:44.670 - 00:18:57.699

law students and other people to get them to that point. Andre, and then, and then Jerry Shestack after that. Andre, this is almost soundbite time, I understand, a few minutes on

00:18:57.699 - 00:19:10.834

an issue that deserves months of discussion, but race relations in the United States, public interest movement, where we were in the 60s, where we are today, what are your views and then we'll take it into the future a little bit later. And then Jerry,

00:19:10.915 - 00:19:35.569

I want you to talk about international human rights in a moment. Yeah. So I guess what I'd like to focus on in terms of briefly would be the way that African Americans use the justice system today as opposed to 30 years ago. And I think 30 years or more ago we were in the state of mind of having

00:19:35.569 - 00:19:53.739

more confidence in the justice system. We thought that through the justice system equality would be attained. I don't believe we felt at that time that race would never make a difference in 2001, but we thought that we would have more gains than we do

00:19:53.739 - 00:20:15.359

have. And, and today I guess what strikes me. It is not only the loss of confidence that many of us have as African-Americans in the justice system, but the difference in perspective that many young people have as opposed to. Andre, let me just ask you to speak into the mic

00:20:15.359 - 00:20:35.300

and ask all the speakers so we're recording it. Thanks. As opposed to the perspective that African Americans have in the justice system and from my experience, someone who is litigating civil rights cases it takes more fortitude today than

00:20:35.300 - 00:20:49.930

it took before to hang in there and I think you do it because you know deep down aside what you're doing is right, but you do it with the expectation that if we win this case, it's against all odds. And that you're

00:20:49.930 - 00:21:03.680

doing it despite the fact that you have a certain jury that you have to convince or even if you are lucky enough to get to the jury. Andre, let me ask you said 30 years ago, 35 years ago, African Americans

00:21:03.680 - 00:21:15.640

had more faith in the criminal justice system than they do today, which is kind of a remarkable statement when you think back to where we were 30 years ago, a system that was basically all white. I remember practicing when I came here as a public defender.

00:21:15.959 - 00:21:30.709

There were maybe one or two African American judges. Almost all the lawyers were white. The system was segregated not only in the north but in the south. There was a lot of conflict obviously between citizens and police over race issues as we have today,

00:21:31.290 - 00:21:49.939

but you know, you go back to that time and yet your view is: as bad as it was then, worse today? That's my view and I think it's because even though there weren't as many black attorneys at that time, I think

00:21:49.939 - 00:22:02.089

in general there was confidence in the white attorneys who were representing the interests of Black people at that time. And I think today many Black people and I don't wanna generalize and say everyone so let me make it clear I'm

00:22:02.089 - 00:22:18.650

talking about my view of the system from my perspective, see the system as sort of corrupt when it comes to race. That it won't ferret out the racial problems in the system and confront those problems and understand that something has to be done

00:22:18.650 - 00:22:32.160

in order for there to be equal justice in this system. OK, thanks. Jerry Shestack, to move to a different area, we'll try to get some different views here. Jerry Shestack has been. Well, before I get involved in

00:22:32.160 - 00:22:49.800

international human rights, I'd like to comment just generally on the history of it. There's a sort of a nostalgic feeling that the lawyers of old were statesmen as Dean Kronman called, and he laments the lost lawyer, but in

00:22:49.800 - 00:23:06.680

fact, in the area of public interest, the lawyer was not involved. The lawyer generally thought for most of our history that representing a client was the chief public interest. And public interest really didn't exist. There was a kind of charity. It was, Roscoe Pound

00:23:06.680 - 00:23:25.380

called a lawyer in the 19th century a shoddy desperation of corruption and ineptitude, and he was basically correct. In 1870 when Samuel Tilden started the Association of the Bar in New York, he lamented the fact that lawyers are not involved in issues of the

00:23:25.380 - 00:23:42.770

public good. In 1906, Brandeis, writing about the overwhelming business aspects of the profession, talked about the lawyer not being involved in public good. What started to make a difference was really the New Deal when a lot of young lawyers went into the New Deal and became

00:23:42.770 - 00:23:59.619

involved in public policy and they went back into private practice, they took with them concerns of public policy, and that was really the first interest in public interest being part of the legal profession. I think a sea change came during Martin Luther King's Day when lawyers

00:23:59.619 - 00:24:17.819

became involved in civil rights. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, which spawned hundreds of lawyers going to the South to work on civil rights issues but also started public interest groups in Philadelphia and San Francisco and Boston and Chicago, and then

00:24:17.819 - 00:24:34.930

the law against, the war against poverty with Sargent Shriver headed OEO was another impetus to public interest groups and so you found in the 1960s it starting, but if you look at the bar itself as a whole in 1960, they didn't pay much attention. Take

00:24:34.930 - 00:24:52.920

1960 to civil rights, to gender equality, to racial discrimination, to pro bono, to legal services, to human rights treaties. None of that was part of the bar and that has all been changed partially through the civil rights movement, partially through the war against poverty, and partially

00:24:52.920 - 00:25:12.000

to a strange and partially a strange direction in the American Bar Association so that pro bono activity, which is closely related to public interest is now really a mandatory ethical obligation in the bar. Although still not very much. Still lacking and deficient in

00:25:12.000 - 00:25:33.280

many respects. In the international human rights movement, keep in mind that international human rights didn't exist before World War II. The individual had no status in society. Germany, with the Holocaust and the Nazi experience is a prime example that the individual counted for absolutely nothing. It

00:25:33.280 - 00:25:52.869

was in the aftermath of World War II that the human rights movement started through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a series of international human rights treaties, and non-governmental organizations became very much involved in promoting that. Lawyers were rather slow in getting into it, but,

00:25:52.880 - 00:26:11.425

the International Bar Association started a human rights group around 1947, the Union of Advocates did and some other bars. The American Bar Association was very slow in getting into it. In 1950, the genocide convention was voted down by a voice vote in

00:26:11.425 - 00:26:29.160

the American Bar Association. It wasn't until 1970s that the ABA started to endorse the human rights treaty, and the Senate took the position that no human rights treaty would be approved until the American Bar Association approved it. And now you find the Lawyers Committee for

00:26:29.160 - 00:26:47.839

Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, the International League for Human Rights, the International Commission of Jurists. Most of the human rights organizations have a large involvement of lawyers. Some are entirely lawyer dominated, but even those NGOs that are not lawyer organized have lawyers

00:26:47.839 - 00:27:04.910

as part of their leadership. We now find lawyers taking asylum cases, going to trials as trial observers, and they have been an integral part of the rise of the human rights movement and putting it on the human rights agenda, but still there's too

00:27:04.910 - 00:27:18.780

little done in that area. It was just this last month that the ABA established a Center for Human Rights, with the idea of involving bar associations throughout the nation in human rights activities. Jerry, let me stop you there, and I'm gonna ask

00:27:18.859 - 00:27:40.150

on that point, Eli, Ira, Judith and Manlin, who have been involved in immigration issues, the last three in immigration, but Eli in prosecuting really international criminals on the human rights scale, how you got involved, what's your view of international human rights as public

00:27:40.150 - 00:27:57.349

interest work is involved? First of all, I'd like to thank the the law school for recognizing that It is possible to be involved in public interest law and in furtherance of the public interest through public service. I know a number of us up

00:27:57.349 - 00:28:12.209

here have served in government. I may be the only one whose fellowship derives, however, exclusively from that work for the government. And of course, as you say, the work that my colleagues and I do is in the international field, in the

00:28:12.209 - 00:28:31.770

human rights field. We feel that we are doing something to vindicate the civil and human rights of the victims of Nazi and Japanese crimes of persecution, crimes against humanity, albeit at this late date. If one looks back to the 60s, as we're being

00:28:31.770 - 00:28:53.540

encouraged to do, one finds that would be human rights violators, actual human rights violators, dictators had hardly anything to fear. Through the seventies and eighties, the Pol Pots, the Idi Amins, the Augusto Pinochets could be fairly confident that they could act with impunity.

00:28:53.579 - 00:29:08.310

That they would never be brought to the bar of justice for what they had done and what they planned to do. One of the great privileges of my work has been to get to know quite a number of the Nuremberg prosecutors, the veterans as

00:29:08.310 - 00:29:28.474

we call them, and they were part of a great social movement that began after World War II to attempt to protect the rights of individuals in times of war from the depredations of governments in particular through an international criminal justice system initially

00:29:28.474 - 00:29:45.474

through the international military tribunals at Nuremberg and at Tokyo and to a person they have been shocked by the fact that that movement basically died on the vine before the 1940s came to an end. The Cold War intervened. There was no longer East-West cooperation

00:29:45.474 - 00:30:05.560

in these cases. If I am disappointed, and I am, and shocked as I am, it is that it took until almost the advent of the 21st century to get a treaty setting up an international criminal court. Alas, it's not one

00:30:05.560 - 00:30:21.569

that the United States seems likely to be fully on board with for a while, but we are hopeful that the changes that this government needs to be made will be made. It is shocking that it has taken so long, and from my perspective,

00:30:21.839 - 00:30:44.300

it is also shocking that our government has apologized for the inadequate way in which it took custody and dispersed gold and other assets that were looted from victims of the Nazis, but at this very late date in the year 2001, we have not apologized as

00:30:44.300 - 00:31:03.180

a nation, as a government, for having perpetrated the worst crime in the history of the Western Hemisphere, namely the enslavement of African Americans for generation after generation after generation. Even having had an administration that was so obviously very sympathetic on those kinds of issues for

00:31:03.180 - 00:31:14.660

the last 8 years, still, the apology has not been made, and I hasten to add, I speak for myself now and not for the government. We're going to come back to where we should be going on that point, so I don't want

00:31:14.660 - 00:31:32.339

you to drop it. Ira, we're going to turn if I can to immigration policy, impact of federal law, impact of lawyers and public interest lawyers in that area. Again, I ask you kind of the marker question. Go back 30 years, where we

00:31:32.339 - 00:31:51.750

were then, where we are now. I think it's related to international human rights in some ways. I think it's in some sense kind of a case of too much success. I think in the 70s and 80s and to some extent

00:31:51.750 - 00:32:08.530

in the 90s, a lot of public interest litigation, a lot of class actions were brought for the first time. Most of them were successful, probably not because of the lawyer's ability, but because the immigration service was so bad. And did things that were so

00:32:08.530 - 00:32:28.729

inconsistent with their own regulations and so forth that they were kind of an easy target. The response has been the 1996 law, and the 1996 law has done something that is truly incredible in American legal history. It is sad that we now

00:32:28.729 - 00:32:48.180

have a federal agency that is really in effect immune from suit. Congress in 1996 passed 17 different preclusion statutes saying that you could not sue the immigration service, for example, if they made a decision on detention. If they make a discretionary decision and say

00:32:48.430 - 00:33:00.949

we think you may be a threat and we're not going to release you, or they put your bond at $100,000 and you say you should have a bond of $100, you can no longer sue the Attorney General of the United States and that person

00:33:00.949 - 00:33:15.300

stays in detention until they're deported. We now have in front of the Supreme Court this year two issues that are being seriously debated that I think no one might have thought would ever be seriously debated, which is, is there a writ of habeas corpus that would

00:33:15.300 - 00:33:31.839

protect somebody from indefinite detention in the United States? That is now a serious issue because Congress in 1996 said, in effect, or at least the government's position is that the writ of habeas corpus has been abolished. On the other side, in some sense on

00:33:31.839 - 00:33:49.560

the brighter side of all of this, is immigration has become a national debate. We have people from Microsoft and Bill Gates getting involved in the debate saying we don't have enough foreign workers in the country to George Bush saying now the president saying

00:33:49.560 - 00:34:04.400

that we need to have a new guest worker program in the United States to all the public interest groups saying that we don't have a big enough amnesty in the United States. It has become a national issue whether it's Elian Gonzalez

00:34:04.400 - 00:34:21.860

or some other case. Immigration is now on the front pages of the American newspapers and in the public's mind as I don't think it was 30 years ago. It certainly wasn't when I started practicing law. Manlin Chee, you've been involved in representing

00:34:22.199 - 00:34:52.899

non-citizens. What's your view of where we are? You can use a microphone. Here. When I started working, it was in the late 70s. I remember going for job interviews when I was in law school and they asked me what I was

00:34:52.899 - 00:35:13.000

interested in. You speak up a little bit. And they said, I would say I was interested in immigration. I practiced in Greensboro, North Carolina and most of the interviewers would say, well, you need to go to San Francisco. There's not going to be any immigration

00:35:13.000 - 00:35:32.879

law possible in Greensboro, North Carolina. Well, I have a practice. I have 2 offices and I have a few staff. And I'm busier than I want to be. But most of my clients are really poor. They come here for the American dream and that's why I

00:35:32.879 - 00:35:56.520

love my work because every day I relive the American dream. The problem that I'm seeing is that there's such a backlash against immigrants. I don't know when the pendulum will swing the other way. As Ira said in 1996, that law named after

00:35:56.520 - 00:36:18.459

Ira, it's called IIRAIRA, and it essentially made a lot of issues come to the forefront for immigrants. There was an issue that I thought would never be possible in the United States. I mean, this is the country that is a country of freedom and

00:36:18.459 - 00:36:38.070

country of great hope, and I see cases where a young man commits a crime when he's in high school, and then when he's in his 50s and doing well and has grandchildren. Immigration will swoop down and pick him up and he's an aggravated felon and

00:36:38.070 - 00:36:56.959

he has to go home. And then I have to deal, I mean, I have to deal with all the entire issue of the whole family, the grandchildren, the children. They just cannot, they don't even know that the man had committed this crime. And yet in

00:36:56.959 - 00:37:18.250

Greensboro, North Carolina, when I bring the issue up, there was the attitude is, well, they don't belong here. And If they are, if they committed a crime, they should go home even if it's 40 years ago. And the law was enacted only 4 years ago.

00:37:18.800 - 00:37:37.479

So, I not only see the pendulum swinging I just, I guess it could be just in my part of the United States, but I just don't see this public sympathy moving to swing the pendulum the other way. So, and then, of course,

00:37:37.560 - 00:37:58.350

with immigration lawyers, there's very few immigration lawyers that can do that kind of work because it's essentially not a whole lot we can do for someone who's an aggravated felon except hand out the paper towels. So, it may be hopeless, but I just feel like

00:37:58.889 - 00:38:15.729

as you win a small victory at a time trying to get the courts to rethink the crimes, the state courts to rethink the crimes that were committed 20, 30 years ago, we just have to be so much more imaginative now because we cannot attack the immigration

00:38:16.169 - 00:38:35.820

service directly. I mean, so from the time I started to the time today, I just see it going backwards a lot. Judith Bernstein Baker, who ran the public interest program at Penn Law for a number of years, was the first program director and got it

00:38:35.820 - 00:38:52.659

on its feet. Now in the immigration field there's a theme here of some victories, some backlash, some response, and maybe that's true in all politics, true on all social issues, certainly true on public interest issues. The more you win, the more you become

00:38:52.659 - 00:39:34.100

a target. Rights are stripped away and sometimes there's a reaction. Again, your view from now the practitioner on the immigration side, is it only North Carolina or is it Philadelphia as well? Very much Philadelphia. In fact we have a children's jail where unaccompanied minors from [inaudible] or China who are put in this children's jail, in detention ready to be deported and of course there's no federal funding or any kind of funding to help these children.

00:39:34.100 - 00:40:10.110

And they range in age from 7 or 8 through 18. And next to that, that's they're down in Berks County, a big population. And then there's Yorks county that just had 800 immigration detainees also far from the population and denied human services and they have a women's wing of 150 women. And we had occasion to visit that wing this week when one of our clients who was horribly abused, was arrived in the United States

00:40:10.110 - 00:40:36.989

and was told that she should apply for asylum and then she [inaudible]. I think that the 1996 law has everybody reeling still, but that the immigration bar has put up the greatest effort chipping away brick by brick and case by case at this law. One of the big issues that was

00:40:36.989 - 00:40:59.780

alluded to is retroactivity. How can you report someone for a crime they may have committed before 1996 under this new law, and bit by bit there's been chipping away at that legally until you have some cases making their way up to the Supreme Court, but more than that, it's really shown to me

00:40:59.780 - 00:41:35.179

that immigrant community. I think if the theme of this conference is social movements and law reform, I think this is the time that immigration lawyers need to join the movement as allies. For the first time we've got Alan Greenspan and Kennedy saying that immigration is good. have cities that are being rebuilt by immigrants, and to me one of the most exciting things, although the law is very stressful. But

00:41:35.179 - 00:42:05.919

one of the most exciting things is the mobilization going on in the immigrant community. Challenge this and to stand up up and say we are people and we live here and work here. And I am personally grateful to have seen that firsthand. I went to Washington with 40 Liberians months ago to try to get amnesty for Liberians and on the way up to Washington I am standing with the other people, they were singing all kinds of songs

00:42:05.919 - 00:42:21.409

I was convinced they were from the civil rights but no, these were the original hymns. And this was a very Christian group of people and of course all the civil rights songs are based on the original hymns and I think for us as lawyers, one of

00:42:21.409 - 00:42:37.870

our biggest challenges is what is our role in such a group and how do we, when we know the issue is not just chipping away legally, but with 1996, the law must be changed but I don't think we're gonna win a lot of this in the courts and how do

00:42:37.870 - 00:42:50.659

we form these coalitions, and to me that's the exciting thing and the challenge. Yeah, I wanna follow up on that, Judith, and I want to go to Bob Hayes in a moment who's dealt mainly with homeless issues, but Judith

00:42:51.360 - 00:43:04.219

even given your view, and you're right, there have been some victories against that law, immigration bar has stood pretty steadfast. Can it be done with the numbers you're talking about, with the number of people being held? Who's going to represent them?

00:43:04.699 - 00:43:21.870

Is that, is it possible to do simply by the system we have now of either volunteers, some immigration lawyers? CLS legal services cannot represent them, right? Barred by Congress, can't represent people in that status. Extraordinary, right? Where are the services going to come from?

00:43:23.370 - 00:43:58.100

That's my mantra. It's a foundation. I mean the point is it's, there's no government money for the services that I lost. The government will not support legal services and in the detention numbers alone, I think we now have over 20,000 people in detention whereas three or four years ago there were 8,000. So the numbers

00:43:58.100 - 00:44:21.110

are, I don't know if Ira has any other thoughts on this, but it a very big problem, especially when they detain people in areas that are very far from population centers. In Pennsylvania we have 11 jails they contract with the county jail. So you have to go very far to get the service. Ok we're gonna pick up on that

00:44:21.110 - 00:44:38.520

again. Bob Hayes, homelessness kind of crashed on the public consciousness 20 years ago, 20-25 years ago. You became involved, I think you were with a law firm at that time. You were in private practice, is that right? Guilty as charged. OK, you became

00:44:38.520 - 00:44:53.959

involved and became one of the leading advocates of the rights of homeless in New York and then nationally, national organization. There is this theme, I think the immigration, I think the criminal justice, I think legal services gets punished because it's successful. What's your view using the

00:44:53.959 - 00:45:15.010

homeless as an example of both the social movement and the legal movement? What have we learned? I think we've learned that the lawyers have to stay back a little further than we have, at least on those kind of social issues that are economic based. Kind

00:45:15.010 - 00:45:29.449

of social movements that Danny started our discussion off with as being reasonably successful, talking about feminism, for instance, of course, was basically a middle class movement in its origin, I think some of the rights of disabled folks that have been achievements in the

00:45:29.449 - 00:45:41.489

last twenty years. A little louder, I don't know if people can hear you. A little louder, yeah. I think some of the achievements of the movement toward empowering people with disabilities is also a success story of the last couple of decades, but again, something kind

00:45:41.489 - 00:46:01.639

of based in middle class origins, at least. I used to envy, when representing poor people living on the streets, civil libertarians. Not because I necessarily always bought their position, but because they really needed a judge to convince and it kind of wasn't an

00:46:01.639 - 00:46:21.659

issue. Well, ultimately I felt that under our legal system, the economic battles like housing, education, all the important ones, immigration rights now are fundamentally ones that lawyers can't win without a political base. So, I mean, looking back, you know, we try to cobble around the litigation

00:46:21.659 - 00:46:40.330

for homeless folks, political movements, political support. Again, perhaps guilty as charged because there's too much incrementalism in doing it that way, but I think that's probably one of the biggest struggles that the folks who, you know talk at Penn Law School's honorary fellows, may

00:46:40.330 - 00:46:56.969

not always be the best folks to communicate to the 51% solution that economic victory means. And, you know, man, I was down south last week, you know, watching day after day coverage of the death of Dale Earnhardt. I had no idea who he

00:46:56.969 - 00:47:09.530

was and yet he was an icon to a big part of what could be a 51% constituency. So I guess if I learned anything looking backwards about where to go forward, it's to figure out a way to reach out better politically than we have in the

00:47:09.530 - 00:47:31.610

past. OK, Cruz Reynoso, this point about social movements, political movements. Is it possible to achieve any of these legal victories and keep them maintained without political support, and what does that mean for dealing with community organizations and building political and social support for the

00:47:31.750 - 00:47:50.669

legal results we're looking for? The short answer in my view is no. I, lawyers are still lawyers. Lawyers are there to represent individuals and to represent groups. And those and those groups then the lawyers can give real power to those groups but I haven't

00:47:50.669 - 00:48:07.229

found that lawyers can actually provide the leadership in any social movement. Even I was in legal services and we represented a lot of groups, but we couldn't get out there and lead the charge. We had to be those who gave legal power

00:48:07.229 - 00:48:24.929

to those who were leading the charge. And very often social movements are about simply enforcing the law. I think before legal services, the legislatures would sometimes pass laws that gave citizens a lot of rights in the full confidence that they would

00:48:24.929 - 00:48:39.209

never be enforced. Somehow when legal services came into being then a lot of those rights that the poor had were in fact being enforced and then the legislature started being a little bit more conservative in my view, because then the poor had a little bit

00:48:39.209 - 00:48:57.159

more power than they had before. So I think that we as lawyers, I think really are the arm, we can provide a lot of resources to the social movements and incidentally as citizens, not as lawyers, but as citizens, I think

00:48:57.159 - 00:49:14.669

we can afford, we can provide some leadership to others in the role of citizens to form organizations to be officers in those organizations and so on, but I don't think that lawyers can really be the leaders of social movements. Janet Stotland and

00:49:14.669 - 00:49:30.300

then Bruce Terris. Janet, you've been working on education law reform. You have a history in legal services, you're the head of the director of the Education Law Project in Philadelphia. What about this notion of law reform, of change

00:49:30.300 - 00:49:47.850

through political pressure, working with community groups, how do you achieve your goals? Well, I think one thing that's clear, is that litigation is a less effective strategy for social change than it was when we were young, and when the laws

00:49:47.850 - 00:50:04.709

were stronger and the courts were more welcoming of our cases and more open to and more vigilant and of and concerned about the role to protect vulnerable populations, I mean it's both places, at least in my life, it's not just

00:50:04.909 - 00:50:21.379

the fact that in some instances we had these draconian changes in the law. In my area, one of the statutes I practice under which involves providing special services to children with disabilities in the schools, there's nothing wrong with the law. It stayed essentially strong.

00:50:21.540 - 00:50:38.899

What has changed is the willingness in the courts in which I practice to see themselves as having any legitimate role, particularly in what they see as assistance reform. I mean I have a case in which my judge changed because the judge who had been

00:50:38.899 - 00:50:52.600

in charge of this debacle for 10 years died and the new judge came in, a very nice man, and the very first thing he said to us is, I just don't believe these kinds of cases. I don't believe that this kind of assistance reform which involved a district which

00:50:52.600 - 00:51:08.179

is the poorest and the poorest functioning district, here in Pennsylvania, and he said in front of us, he said it every time we appear before him, that's what he says. This case doesn't belong here. I don't like this role. I don't want to

00:51:08.179 - 00:51:25.000

be here. So what we, what we confront is not just that in some instances our tools are eroding from the decision of the Supreme Court, but that the judges that we're confronting no longer accept their role, which I believe is their constitutional role to

00:51:25.000 - 00:51:37.679

protect the vulnerable and to make the reforms and enforce the laws that are in front of them. That means that folks like us, and I deal not just with disabilities issues but I deal with public education generally, our mission is better

00:51:37.679 - 00:51:56.949

and fairer public schools. That shares with you folks, in many instances, the issue of quality public education and equity often doesn't have legal underpinnings, particularly here in Pennsylvania where our Supreme Court has completely refused to take responsibility under the

00:51:56.949 - 00:52:12.070

state constitution for finance equity in the state. And it, and it's forced those of us who are trying to make these kinds of changes to look to developing either within our organization or in collaboration with partners, a range of strategies that at least

00:52:12.070 - 00:52:27.080

when I started practicing 5 or 10 years ago, I never thought I would have to bring to the table. Communication strategies, climate change strategies, as well as strategies I feel myself ill equipped to do. It's not what I'm trained to do. It's not what

00:52:27.080 - 00:52:39.679

I understand well, it's not what I do effectively. But more and more I'm driven to understand that I can't do the kind of work and create the kinds of change and the final thing is that, it's been an echo here, which is one

00:52:39.679 - 00:53:01.290

of my great disappointments really sort of in life and in my career and my practice, it is not just the kind of erosion of the tools and the forms. It is really the growing recognition that the public is willing to countenance in society which I

00:53:01.290 - 00:53:18.600

would never have imagined that they were prepared to tell us. Whether it's the kind of thing that's going on with the folks that you're representing, refugee populations, whether it's the abandonment of children whether in our school systems, in our urban districts,

00:53:18.860 - 00:53:35.360

whether it's the rollback of the legal services programs ability to represent, whether it's medical assistance or welfare benefits to indigent folks. I felt like each of these were hammer blows as I understood that the public was not going to rise and say this isn't the

00:53:35.360 - 00:53:52.370

kind of country we are, this isn't what we stand for. And that's really in a odd place, that sense that those who share our views and share the view of what America is, are not represented to the extent that

00:53:52.370 - 00:54:03.689

I thought it was in this country and that in a lot of ways I think is the real thing that discourages me at this point in my life. We're not going to change that by litigation. Bruce Terris, you've been in this business for

00:54:03.860 - 00:54:21.489

quite a long time. Your views? Let me try to separate two themes that I think are closely related, but I think they're still very importantly different. One is the question of public interest law and the change in the last 40 years of public

00:54:21.489 - 00:54:38.820

interest law seems to be enormous and an enormous success. There are still obvious tremendous deficiencies. There are not nearly enough lawyers to serve the poor, and there are all kinds of other particular areas where there are not enough lawyers. The political situation in the country, it

00:54:38.820 - 00:54:59.540

seems to me has gone exactly in the opposite direction. The deterioration has been enormous. 40 years ago. There was John Kennedy, there was Martin Luther King, there was Lyndon Johnson, there was Robert Kennedy. Nobody even approximates people that level today who are interested in the kind

00:54:59.540 - 00:55:15.919

of causes that we are we are interested in. It would maybe the most vivid example to me of this is the fact that Lyndon Johnson could have as the centerpiece of his administration something called the war on poverty. And, but for the Vietnam War, I think

00:55:15.919 - 00:55:37.350

it is absolutely clear he would have been overwhelmingly re-elected. We've just seen a campaign in which the liberal candidate, I believe, virtually never mentioned poor people The entire argument for a liberal candidate was that he would do a far better job to serve the middle class.

00:55:37.909 - 00:55:59.129

Now, I'm not particularly criticizing Al Gore in saying that because politicians, their job is to get elected. Standing on a street corner and talking about poverty and being overwhelmingly defeated would have served absolutely no purpose whatsoever. My point is that the change in this country has

00:55:59.129 - 00:56:22.080

been enormous in the last 40 years so that today essentially the issues that the four men I talked about led the way on essentially cannot even be discussed today in a public forum in a way which gets any broad support. It seems to me what

00:56:22.580 - 00:56:42.639

what all of us have to recognize is the tremendous limits on lawyers. The change in the country does not come through lawyers. Very, very rarely, even something as fundamental as the civil rights movement, where certainly the NAACP legal defense fund was extremely important. That is not

00:56:42.639 - 00:56:59.129

why the civil rights movement was successful. I think it is absolutely clear it was the one on the street. And it's those kind of fundamental changes in society which are critical. Now do public interest lawyers not have an important purpose? I think they clearly do.

00:56:59.750 - 00:57:16.020

But that is not essentially the way society moves and in the long run, the only way we are going to be successful in court and we're going to have judges who are going to be willing to listen to us, etc. is if there are fundamental changes

00:57:16.199 - 00:57:33.919

in the way the society looks at the issues that confront it, and I think at the moment the the movement continues to be in the wrong direction. A good turning point. Let me ask Alex and then Tobey next. I'd like to

00:57:33.919 - 00:57:46.129

turn a little bit more to the future now. We've got a broad brush of where we've been. A number of problems have been posed. Where are the resources? Where are the new lawyers coming from? I look at this table and it's

00:57:46.520 - 00:58:03.169

probably no accident of history the way this program is structured. Most people are 50 and above, right? Maybe a couple below that, right? But there we are, kind of the older, wiser generation of the public interest movement. Where are the new troops going

00:58:03.169 - 00:58:19.320

to come from? There are law students here who are interested. How do we get them involved? I want people to think about the problems, the structural problems in this profession as private firms are attracting lawyers at $120,000, 130,000, 140,000 a year. Public interest entry level stays

00:58:19.320 - 00:58:32.280

at 30, 35, 40. What are we going to do about that? What are the roles of law firms? You want to talk about that in terms of providing lawyers. And then this question that Judith raised and other people have talked about: how do we do it

00:58:32.280 - 00:58:44.699

in terms of lawyering and social movements? I mean, what are the connections that have to be made? But Alex, first, your views and maybe as a transition where we've been and your views on some of those problems for the future. Well, one comment on, on where

00:58:44.699 - 00:59:02.250

we've been, even though you told me not to talk about it. You can, you can go there. Yes, we're all familiar with the saying that the glass may be half full or the glass may be half empty. There's that wonderful remark with respect to

00:59:02.250 - 00:59:23.229

that saying, maybe the glass is the wrong size. In a sense, I think some of the discussion has been asking the wrong question. On various substantive issues of law, we've been saying, have we, the public interest law movement made progress or not. I

00:59:23.229 - 00:59:45.090

think what Bruce Terris just said and what Jerry Shestack said before him, are both the right perspective on that kind of question. There was no public interest law movement 35 years ago, and it's a major one now, and I'll respond as to where

00:59:45.090 - 01:00:01.669

they're gonna come from, in a moment. But that isn't the way the country gets shaped. I would say that on virtually every substantive issue of law that you've asked us about in the last hour and a half, we would have been a hell of a

01:00:01.669 - 01:00:25.949

lot worse off than we are today without the public interest law movement and in some areas, gender was mentioned, emerging international human rights movement and so on, it's clear that we have made progress that's significantly attributable to the work of public interest lawyers.

01:00:26.409 - 01:00:51.040

So the key question is, you know, what's shaping our environment within which we as lawyers have to operate and clearly the people to my left have collectively sais it's social and political movements writ large forces thar are not directly impacted in most cases by

01:00:51.050 - 01:01:12.760

public interest law, but we should celebrate the creation of this movement in a short space of 35 years. There's an article in the Washington Monthly by Peter Schuck, December of 2000, that I commend to anybody who hasn't read it yet, about the public

01:01:13.219 - 01:01:35.810

interest law movement, focusing particularly on impact litigation however. The pros and the cons. His conclusion is that we're here to stay, and I think that's a sound conclusion. And the public interest law movement has become one of the pieces of our political and social

01:01:35.810 - 01:01:54.830

landscape, and I think the challenge for us recognizing that it's a relatively small piece, it's not a major piece in shaping where the country is going to move, and it's affected in a major way by what those other forces do or don't do. Bruce's comment

01:01:54.830 - 01:02:13.389

about where we were with Johnson and Kennedy, etc. and where we are today is right on the mark. We don't change that through the public interest law movement. We operate within those constraints. The question, the challenge for the movement is, given that reality, how can we

01:02:13.389 - 01:02:33.669

strengthen it in the next 35 to 40 years recognizing our limitations right. Now where they're gonna come from? Out of the woodwork is my answer. It's nice woodwork here. I know $25,000 salaries, but we still have, in our small

01:02:33.669 - 01:02:56.469

public interest law firm in Chicago, we still have a goodly flow of people who are coming. We have two fellowships now, one we created internally our fellowship and there God bless them, there are these wonderfully talented law school graduates who are willing to work for $35,000

01:02:56.469 - 01:03:14.409

and $40,000 a year at least for a couple of years. They keep coming. They haven't gone away and partly I think that's due to the history that others have talked about. This movement has been created. It's had an effect on the psyche of not just lawyers

01:03:14.409 - 01:03:33.143

but the population at large and some non-negligible part of our population believes that public interest law is a good thing. It ought to continue, and some small part of that population wants to get in there and do it. I'm optimistic about that. Very important views, and

01:03:33.143 - 01:03:49.355

I think we can't stress enough the difference in the world of what it was in '65, as I say, I look around Philadelphia and I see a dozen public interest organizations putting aside legal services and the public defender. Public defender in Philadelphia today with 250 lawyers.

01:03:49.476 - 01:04:03.196

I started there. There were 30. Of course we have a lot more criminal prosecutions today, so I'm not sure it's a victory or not to say we've got that many lawyers doing that, but a huge increase. And yet still, where are we going? Tobey and then

01:04:03.196 - 01:04:25.699

Hans. This question of the law firm's responsibility, whether it be through pro bono work, whether it be through scholarships or fellowships to encourage younger lawyers to do public interest work. You've been involved in kind of instrumental in Philadelphia in creating organizations seeking to increase access to

01:04:25.699 - 01:04:40.820

justice through getting more lawyers involved not only in the law schools but in the law firms through organizations. We know we've made some progress and yet we know there's a huge demand out there, if we're going to have justice in this country, to get lawyers representing

01:04:40.820 - 01:04:58.370

people who are unrepresented. What's our challenge for the next 10 years? Yeah, I don't know. Alright, we'll go to dinner. With that introduction, really, it's hard for me to respond. I mean we have 14,000 lawyers in Philadelphia and 100 doing public interest law.

01:04:58.629 - 01:05:11.649

Now if you add in the defense lawyers and the prosecutors and the government lawyers, we're up to 500-600. But that's what we're dealing with as public interest law and the funding isn't going up, so the number of jobs isn't going up, so we have great

01:05:11.649 - 01:05:22.620

students coming out and there's no place for them to go. So we're trying to be as creative as possible and trying to figure out new ways of funding it or new ways of doing fellowships or going to foundations, but nobody really likes funding lawyers.

01:05:22.729 - 01:05:38.554

I mean it's not a good, it's not a service, it's litigation, so there's not, there's nothing that makes people wanna give except if you really understand the underlying issues. When I got this award in '93, I described myself as a workaday lawyer. That's

01:05:38.554 - 01:05:51.034

what I think I am. I work in a big law firm and I do volunteer work and I'm really honored to be here with so many incredible people. I'm not on law reform. I do one at a time kind of law. I see myself

01:05:51.034 - 01:06:04.250

as more of a virus. I think that when I go to a law firm, my job is to kind of, you know, corrupt others. And I owe it to Danny Greenberg because he corrupted me when I was at school with him and

01:06:04.250 - 01:06:19.330

to Gary Bellow who started the program when I was in it. I'm enormously grateful for that and so I'm trying to make sure that other people get corrupted in the same way that when they leave law school they have crossed the divide that

01:06:19.330 - 01:06:37.540

says I don't know how to do this, I'm too scared to get involved, and see I can do this and it's not so tough. And you cross the issues of race and gender and class and here I am in my law firm we have 300 lawyers.

01:06:37.580 - 01:06:54.300

It's a law firm down the street. We do all the high powered corporate stuff you'd ever want and we have a mandatory pro bono program in custody work. We don't do custody but every single one of our youngest lawyers does custody and it's amazing. They're

01:06:54.300 - 01:07:10.860

having a great time. Same here. At this law school, the law students are figuring out that they can do this stuff. So when they come out and they become specialized and they're doing high, you know, high-end securities fraud or securities work or corporate stuff, they've already

01:07:10.860 - 01:07:26.379

figured they can help this woman with a little bit, little bitty problem. They can stand up in an administrative agency and speak English better than she can. That's a fairly empowering idea, and what I'm finding among the younger lawyers that I'm able to touch and

01:07:26.379 - 01:07:42.570

work with, they like that. It's different than working with a corporation. So I'm trying to make sure that in law schools here and we just use this model to get Harvard to get 40 hours of pro bono total, but you know something, but more and

01:07:42.570 - 01:07:57.729

more laws. They're always following us. And they're a decade behind. But we're trying to get more and more people to realize it's not such a risk. So I guess in a different way I'm not really a virus, I'm trying to immunize kids so that

01:07:57.729 - 01:08:09.659

when they go out there they don't get corrupted by what's so easy to reach out for. They can see that, yeah, they can get $150,000 a year. They can also give 10% away and they can do 50 hours of pro bono at the boot. I

01:08:09.659 - 01:08:23.229

think that's with 14,000 lawyers out there who aren't public interest lawyers, that's a resource. Hans and then Jerry, but I want everybody to kind of pick up on this issue, after those comments on,

01:08:23.950 - 01:08:38.859

I mean, you put it pretty graphically, 100 public interest lawyers. You've got the defender and you've got legal services, so you've got maybe a couple 100 more. 14,000 in private practice. 98% of the students who graduate from Penn Law School go into private practice eventually.

01:08:39.278 - 01:08:53.559

How do we institutionalize what you're talking about and is the way to go, as you've suggested, perhaps getting younger lawyers involved in some pro bono work, whether it's custody or immigration matters or whatever it may be, is that the way to go, or is the way

01:08:53.559 - 01:09:07.568

to go really as Skadden Arps has done and some other law firms, put money up to fund lawyers who want to do this full time? Now maybe they're not inconsistent. Maybe we have to do both in terms of increasing resources, but it strikes me there are

01:09:07.775 - 01:09:21.536

ways of thinking about what the law firms and lawyers' responsibilities are other than to say handle an occasional case that's either a requirement or it'll be good if you do it. But so if people would think about it and respond because a lot of people here

01:09:21.536 - 01:09:38.901

do their public interest work through law firms. Andre Dennis started the civil rights department in his law firm, was able to do that. Hans, your views? Well, to answer your question, your direct question directly, I think you clearly have to do it both ways, and I'm

01:09:38.901 - 01:09:57.631

more qualified to talk a little bit about the law firm end of things than I am about the legal services end. I have never been in legal services. I'm an honorary fellow here really because I've devoted much of my time as a managing partner of a

01:09:57.631 - 01:10:18.979

large law firm to institute what was the first public mandatory public service pro bono department in a major law firm, at least in Boston, and there weren't many ahead of us in the mid 1970s across the country and then spread out to all

01:10:18.979 - 01:10:41.169

the other law firms in Boston. So let me, against that background, let me say first that what Bruce Terris and others said is clearly right. We have a totally different picture today than we had in 1970, in the mid-1970s when I started the pro bono

01:10:41.410 - 01:10:58.049

movement in large law firms in Boston. When we started that, we did it because we thought it was right, but let me confess it was darn good business. We could at that time, it gave us an edge in hiring the top people out of the top

01:10:58.049 - 01:11:13.830

law firm out of the top law schools all over the country. So there was a selfish motive involved and it worked. I did a good part of the hiring and having been, being prominent in the pro bono field in the mid 70s and through the 80s

01:11:13.990 - 01:11:34.009

was a terrific edge for our firm. That has changed. I realize that there are still lawyers who go into your firm and do other things, but on the whole, if you look at the top 10% or 20% of the graduates of the top law firms, that's

01:11:34.009 - 01:11:52.370

the sort of cohort that we see. The fact that we had the first pro bono department and probably still have one of the most active ones generally or elicits a yawn. It is not what they are after. They want to know different things, and that, I

01:11:52.370 - 01:12:09.310

think, is not the result of the people being different. It reflects what's going on countrywide. There is no, there are no Bobby Kennedy and no John Kennedy and all the rest of it that you've pointed out very correctly. The question is what do we do about

01:12:09.310 - 01:12:26.109

that? Some things have enormously improved. Once again taking Boston as an example, but I happen to know that the same thing is true in Philadelphia in many major cities. When we were the first, and it took a long time to interest other firms. Nowadays, most of

01:12:26.109 - 01:12:46.890

the Boston law major Boston law firms have active pro bono departments. That's a great improvement over what used to happen, but the pressure of the bottom line is terrific in law firms, as we all know, and the law firms differ in how much credit or

01:12:46.890 - 01:13:01.759

even how much pressure they exert on people to do it. Just sending a memo around and saying we have a case, who wants to take it? Isn't really enough. You have to say that this is part of what we expect of you, and if you eventually

01:13:01.759 - 01:13:15.505

want to be a partner or as a partner you want to be taken seriously and promoted, this is an important thing of your work. This is actually where I think one of the we we ought to talk about in addition to the other things that you

01:13:15.505 - 01:13:28.786

all talk about is how do we get more law firms to do that thing, that sort of thing. Law firms, the big law firms in all the major cities are enormously profitable at the present time. They can do it and there are decent people who run

01:13:28.786 - 01:13:46.301

them and decent people in them. Somehow they have to be once again convinced that not only do they have a pro bono department which does between 1 and 2% of the time of the total law firm, but they have to require more and they have to

01:13:46.441 - 01:14:01.149

emphasize that this is part of what's expected of every self-respecting lawyer in the firm. And if they want promotions and respect, that's what they have to do. How to do that, I have some ideas, but maybe we can talk about that another time. I'm gonna have Jerry make

01:14:01.149 - 01:14:16.984

a comment on that, and then I want to ask Danny Greenberg along those lines, this model of requiring of trying to pressure or trying to persuade law firms into pro bono work, what impact is that going to have, if any, help on your kind of

01:14:16.984 - 01:14:32.580

work? I mean, you represent criminal defendants. You have the legal aid part. You have the civil side. We have legal services lawyers. Is that really going to be the answer to the need for resources in some specialized areas? But Jerry first and then Danny. The idea

01:14:32.580 - 01:14:50.779

of public service in the first place or pro bono, it seems to me is to address justice issues, whether it's discrimination, affirmative action, children's rights, homelessness, or whatever they are, actually government should be doing those kind of things. If government

01:14:50.779 - 01:15:05.160

doesn't, then there seems to be an obligation on the private sector to do it. Public interest law firms can do only a certain amount of it. So then we have to turn to the profession at large to do it. If you go back, Hans mentioned

01:15:05.160 - 01:15:22.680

his law firm in the 70s. In 1969, there are only three law firms in this country that had a pro bono program, Hogan and Hartson, Piper and Marbury, and Schneider, Harrison, Segal and Lewis. The ABA, through the section of Individual rights, got a grant of

01:15:22.680 - 01:15:42.359

$100,000 to send people around, to send missionaries around the country to teach law firms how to engage in pro bono projects. It was headed by Marna Tucker and Warren Christopher and Judge Louis Pollak, later Dean of Penn Law School, and law firms began to do it.

01:15:42.819 - 01:16:02.450

The bar has progressed. Now Rule 6.1 of the Model Code makes pro bono service essentially an ethical obligation, although it doesn't spell out how much. Keep in mind that in 1908, before 1908, there were no codes of ethics in the bar. There were no codes on

01:16:02.450 - 01:16:18.154

conflict of law. There was no code that required candor or honesty. There was no code that dealt with any of the ethical responsibilities we now have, so ethics has been a matter of progression. It seems to me there should be an ethical responsibility on the part

01:16:18.154 - 01:16:34.069

of lawyers to have pro bono service, and in my law firm, where I have 110 litigators in my litigation department, it is mandatory. And whether they like it or not, they have to do a certain amount of pro bono and if they do it, they find

01:16:34.069 - 01:16:54.575

there's a lot of joy in it too, so it may start out reluctant, but they become pioneers and enthusiasts after a while. Now if that ethical obligation is realized, it's not just satisfied by contributing $100 or $1,000 or $10,000 for a large law firm. It's contributed

01:16:54.575 - 01:17:12.015

to by doing it. I think law firms last year spent some 3 million hours in pro bono work. That's infinitesimal considering the amount of hours, but it's a good start. Corporations are starting to do that. I've been trying to get corporate counsel when they have a

01:17:12.015 - 01:17:27.520

beauty contest and they interview a lawyer to say to that law firm, what is your pro bono work? What is your record for gender diversity and racial diversity? And not only the law firm, but the lawyer. The corporate counsel says the lawyer who's working on

01:17:27.520 - 01:17:44.265

my matter, I wanna know what his involvement is in pro bono. Be surprised how much pro bono activity that would generate in law firms if corporate counsel would do it, but I think we will never really be able to address the complexity or the tremendous need

01:17:44.265 - 01:18:03.549

unless it becomes an ethical obligation like conflict of interest or respect to the court or whatever the other ethical obligations are. Danny and Bruce, and then Janet. Danny and Janet are more on the front lines. I mean representing,

01:18:03.649 - 01:18:18.509

Danny, head of the Legal Aid Society in New York, criminal defendants, and also the legal services for the poor. All of this is good, I suppose. If we get more lawyers and law firms and get the philosophy of the law

01:18:18.509 - 01:18:32.890

firm that there ought to be pro bono work, is it going to help meet your needs, your demands? Sure, I mean mean one of the roles of a moderator is to pose questions that we get to answer either yes or no or this or

01:18:32.890 - 01:18:46.129

that, and of course the answer almost, and Rudy, I love you and you're doing the right role, but of course the answer to every one of your questions is all of the above. I mean, you know, the Legal Aid Society is a $130 million organization doing

01:18:46.129 - 01:19:03.073

criminal defense on a trial level, on an appeal level, the federal defender, capital defender, civil legal services without the restrictions, juvenile work, lobbying work, class action work. And I find myself for 30 years being on panels, you know, what's the most important work you could do,

01:19:03.152 - 01:19:15.592

you know, bullshit, band-aid work, you know that's bullshit, you know I work with children, that's the most important stuff, you know, they're, we're on the front lines, you know, every time you win on the front lines they change the law lobbying, you know, laws bullshit, you

01:19:15.592 - 01:19:27.815

know, laws bullshit. You shouldn't be a lawyer. You organize the masses, you know, and we sort of sit around as if, you know, out of all of this is gonna come, you know the answer, you know, the most important stuff and of course I think the

01:19:27.815 - 01:19:43.806

answer is all of that's necessary. There are times when lawyers simply as lawyers can accomplish something. You're always better if there are social movements to go along with what you accomplish and if you can get people who organize social movements to move along, that's really terrific

01:19:43.806 - 01:19:53.838

and you know, do we want the private bar? Of course I want the private bar. I want a lot of their money. They give us a lot of money. I want even more money. I also want them in family court. But we're talking about, we are

01:19:53.838 - 01:20:09.278

talking about making choices though for a law firm it may be a choice of encouraging or requiring lawyers in the firm to do pro bono work. You take one or two custody cases a year, or it may be perhaps what we ought to be requiring of

01:20:09.278 - 01:20:22.662

law firms is putting money up for lawyers who will do that full time. Again, I will maintain to you the best way to get lawyers to put up money is when they've been in court or know legal services lawyers or understand the work and have an

01:20:22.662 - 01:20:35.461

intuitive feel. They've come through a clinical program, they've met people, they've been mentored by you, they choose to go to a firm, they keep that in mind, and then we who are doing it full-time go to them and say to them, I want you to take

01:20:35.461 - 01:20:46.062

cases, I want you to see what our clients' lives are like, and then I want you to go back to that firm and say, it's not enough to just take cases, I want money out of you also. There's a connection there, and then they get on

01:20:46.062 - 01:20:59.524

your board, and when they get on the board, they really get excited and then they say to you, you know, a partner just left Cravath and is now the general counsel of Paine Webber. He grew up in this environment in which pro bono was good. Let's go to Paine Webber

01:20:59.524 - 01:21:12.205

and see what they're going to be able to do and maybe you get him on your board as we have done so that he then says, let me call together 10 corporate counsel for a luncheon and tell them why and if you say to them, do

01:21:12.205 - 01:21:24.209

you like lawyers? They say, no, I hate lawyers. They oppress me, they're bad, they tell me what I can't do. I won't fund lawyers, and then you say to them, I don't want you to fund lawyers. You like children? I love children. I have a couple

01:21:24.209 - 01:21:36.330

myself and I love children. Good. So I want you to give us money for children. We're not gonna use your money for lawyers litigating. We're gonna use your money for children, and we're gonna see whether or not we could get the state legislature to

01:21:36.330 - 01:21:47.890

pick up the TANF regulations. So don't give me money for lawyers. Give me money for children. You like people? You think it's fair what's happening with immigrants? We have an immigration process. You think that that should happen. Don't give me money for lawyers. Give me

01:21:47.890 - 01:22:02.560

money for healthcare. You think that it's good as we change to health care to have people who can help write regulations to help the providers make more money even as poor people get served. We're terrific. We've been around 125 years, we know how to do that.

01:22:02.939 - 01:22:16.939

So I think that the comments that say you gotta be you gotta use the media, you gotta know law, you know we're advocates we're not lawyers per se. We're advocates and if Tobey's great law firms and Jerry's great law firms never say to

01:22:16.939 - 01:22:30.470

a client, you want me to litigate, they say to a client, what do you want, and we will use any strategy we can to get you what you want, which may include litigation. That's exactly what we should be saying. What is it that our clients show

01:22:30.470 - 01:22:45.250

us they need? What can we do for them? And which of these strategies can help? And how can I get private people involved to get us the resources to keep doing it? All right, Danny Greenberg, the pragmatist. Janet Stotland. Janet, what's your views

01:22:45.250 - 01:23:03.319

on that? I mean, it's obviously true that whatever we can get, whether it's in the form of money, whether it's in the form of engaged young lawyers who are willing to come and work for us, whether it's in the form of attorneys, young and old,

01:23:03.399 - 01:23:14.589

I mean we always talk about the very youngest attorneys who do this work as if it's only the youngest attorneys who should be doing pro bono, and I know that no one on this panel is suggesting that, but, and then it obviously should be a commitment

01:23:14.589 - 01:23:29.609

that's a lifetime commitment for everyone who's a lawyer. All these things would help my client, they help all of our clients. I think though that an important thing here, and it's suggested by a lot of what folks are saying, is that

01:23:29.830 - 01:23:51.959

young lawyers and law students, they understand what's valued by the people who are your mentors. It comes across. If law schools really value a public interest law and public commitment as even private lawyers and inculcate that in the students during the time that

01:23:51.959 - 01:24:06.120

they're there and offer loan abatement programs so that students who don't have a lot of resources and have heavy loans can choose to go into public interest and don't have to make a choice to go into the private sector because they can handle those loans. If

01:24:06.120 - 01:24:19.859

that's valued, if it's as valued as a fancy job in a fancy firm or in the big corporation, if the law that we do is respected and they feel that from the teacher, the teachers who teach them and mentor them, then you

01:24:19.859 - 01:24:32.879

will see that more students will come out and they will have more opportunities. If the folks who are senior partners in the firms and who are responsible for them and who are the people who will hire them and promote them, and you were suggesting that, make

01:24:32.879 - 01:24:46.919

it absolutely clear that this is valued work, that it is work that is respected, that is work that will help them get partners, it will make a difference. They will respond to that. They will do it. So there are reasons why, that are in addition

01:24:46.919 - 01:25:03.770

to the societal reasons, that are both difficult, the loan load is just tremendously difficult. But Susan Feathers here who I think in a meeting of her group when I'm on the advisory committee said that something like, what percentage of kids come to

01:25:03.770 - 01:25:21.339

law school here at Penn with the idea that they're gonna do public interest work. 30%. And what percent go out doing public interest work? 2%, 5%. Well, something happens, you know, a lot of things happen. It's not any one thing, but I think that the

01:25:21.339 - 01:25:37.220

point is that as institutions, as a profession, and as employers, if we value, mentor, and reimburse these things, we won't see 30% of the kids coming out to do public work, but we'll do better. All right, I'm gonna ask Bruce and then Andre

01:25:37.220 - 01:25:51.729

to comment on that, and then I wanna open it up to some questions from the floor, Bruce. It doesn't seem to me that the problem is the shortage of people. The problem is the shortage of positions to practice public interest law. And if one is going

01:25:51.729 - 01:26:09.319

to address how do you expand the public interest law field, it seems to me there are basically 2 basic models. One is that you want somebody to contribute, taking from their resources and put it into public interest law whether and that can be foundations, it can

01:26:09.319 - 01:26:22.540

be private people that you send mailings to, it can be the federal government, it can be it can be law firms. Ultimately, I don't think law firms are going to make a huge contribution in the field. I think it's very important what they do. I have

01:26:22.540 - 01:26:44.950

enormous respect for what they do. Particularly have respect because what they do is contrary, directly inconsistent with basic capitalist economics. The way the law firms operate is the way all businesses operate in our economy, which is they have to maximize profits. They don't maximize

01:26:44.950 - 01:26:58.000

profits, their best partners very frequently move on to some of the law firms. And so the margin of how much work they can put into public interest law is relatively small. I mean it could be 2%, it might be 5%, and if it was an unbelievably

01:26:58.000 - 01:27:17.129

generous, it could be 10%. But you're not going to get enormous amounts of help that way. I think it's very important help because the legal profession, those firms have great prestige and so I don't belittle their contribution in the slightest. The other model, and I

01:27:17.129 - 01:27:35.160

will admit to being self-serving on this process, is a model that attempts to use capitalist economics to expand. That's what fee shifting statutes were intended to do. They do not work. They do not work because they, because the way they are basically administered, it is almost

01:27:35.160 - 01:27:50.850

impossible to run a law firm based on fee shifting statutes. I, this is a subject I think I probably know as much as anybody in this country because I've been doing it for 30 years and at least 5 different times during that 30 years we were

01:27:50.850 - 01:28:09.169

within a month or two months of going out of business that was dependent on one victory or one settlement occurring within that period of time. And it is essentially not a method that one can earn, that any sane person can earn a living at.

01:28:11.100 - 01:28:31.939

But I think the basic idea is still sound if one tinkered with how those statutes operate because if they were made effective, you could expand enormously public interest law without them looking like you depending on essentially a begging mechanism, begging from the government,

01:28:32.060 - 01:28:57.970

begging from private law firms, begging from foundations, but unfortunately, essentially no progress has been made on this for at least a decade or so and in fact we've lost ground, at least in some areas, right? The Prison Litigation Reform Act wipes out attorney fees

01:28:57.970 - 01:29:17.740

effectively for anybody representing prisoners, right, on the theory that we're going to deter frivolous litigation by denying fees to those who win. Well, you figure that one out, Andre. Let me pick up on something you said and that is the, the underlying profit motive of

01:29:17.740 - 01:29:35.899

law firms. And I think with perhaps rare exceptions, that is the beast that we have to deal with and I say to law students when I talk with them from time to time, that law firms react to what you want because law firms pride

01:29:35.899 - 01:29:46.569

themselves in hiring the the best and the brightest. So if you come to us and you tell us that you're interested in public interest work and and by the way I try to get away from that and I wanna talk about civil rights work.

01:29:46.569 - 01:29:59.899

Because public interest work although it's a good term to use, in my firm I wanna talk about civil rights work and the group that I have I want to be viewed as valuable as the corporate group. Now maybe I'm still fighting for that equality,

01:30:00.140 - 01:30:12.669

but that's what I wanna do so that when law students come to us and say, what do you have to offer me with respect to civil rights work. And that's something that's important to me. As a matter of fact, it's so important to me that if

01:30:12.669 - 01:30:26.979

you don't offer me $125,000 a year, but you offer me less, but you offer me this opportunity, I might consider coming to your law firm. That's something that law firms react to. And I think that if we're going to be successful in terms of civil

01:30:26.979 - 01:30:42.560

rights work and the other important areas that we've been talking about we have to somehow get law firms to shift in that direction which again I think starts with law schools and law students. Now it's easy to talk about. Let me go back to

01:30:42.560 - 01:30:55.919

a point you were raising a few minutes ago, and that is should money be spent in terms of law law firms doing work or should law firms make contributions so that we can have more public interest lawyers? The real crunch, I think, has come

01:30:55.919 - 01:31:10.319

in the limited public interest funds that we have through private bar involvement. Commitment that the Legal Service Corporation places on its grantees. That's a tougher decision because when you have to make a decision whether the private bar should do the work or you

01:31:10.319 - 01:31:25.200

should be able to hire another legal service attorney, I know where I come down on that. So I think we have this, this constant erosion of resources, and I put into the mix the Prison Litigation Reform Act because and the fee

01:31:25.200 - 01:31:38.379

shifting statutes are incredibly difficult to make a living at. As a matter of fact, if I could, if you can indulge me for a second, as I was walking out of my office today, we have an attorney's fees petition pending on litigation that we did

01:31:38.379 - 01:31:50.939

in connection with a prison consent decree, and my colleague told me that there was just a case that came down, maybe the Southern District of New York that was against us on that proposition. We'll probably end up in the Third Circuit on that, but the way

01:31:50.939 - 01:32:03.500

the law is evolving, it's tougher to make money on cases. And let's face it again, law firms are in the business of making money. So when you bring money to the bottom line you can get the kind of commitment and respect in a law firm

01:32:03.500 - 01:32:20.259

for civil rights work. When you don't bring money to the bottom line, then you have a real difficult situation. OK, thanks. You know, I think students the other day ought to have learned two things from what you're seeing going on, besides the thing

01:32:20.259 - 01:32:36.979

that you can't herd cats, I think, even with a skilled moderator, you learn that you can't herd cats. That there's a bunch of individuals here that want to say something that's out of the norm because they practice out of the norm. And whenever you're

01:32:36.979 - 01:32:58.580

practicing whatever you want to call it, public interest law, all like that and you're funded from a cushy source and it's real comfortable and it's real popular, you've left practicing public interest law. I mean, it's what we're doing is representing unpopular people, unpopular

01:32:58.580 - 01:33:19.979

causes in unpopular courts, and that's what we want to be doing. We want to be on the other side of the street. And those of us who really want to do quote-unquote public interest law, we don't want to represent the orchestra that doesn't have this in

01:33:19.979 - 01:33:38.220

town and call that public interest work. We want to represent somebody that everybody in town thinks you're a dog for sticking your neck up and defending. Now that's what quote unquote public interest law is to me. It's something that nobody will ever want to fund and

01:33:38.220 - 01:33:55.379

you don't want the majority to fund. Millard, I had that occasion about 10 years ago when Penn Law School had a public interest fair where all the public interest groups come and speak to students, and I knew things had changed from where I had been

01:33:55.379 - 01:34:15.819

25 years ago when sitting at one of the tables was the FBI. And I thought, boy, our definition of public interest has really gotten pretty broad. We'll I have to disagree. Good. I not only disagree, but I think that what I

01:34:15.819 - 01:34:28.689

would say to that statement is, first, as a personal matter, everybody should do what they want to do. And if you're lucky enough and smart enough to want to do public interest law because it's interesting, exciting, it lets you do all the stuff you want to

01:34:28.689 - 01:34:40.636

do, wake up every morning with the dichotomy between human being and professional being as small as it can, then you should do it because you want to do it. You shouldn't do it to sacrifice. You shouldn't do it to do anybody's favors. There aren't enough jobs to

01:34:40.636 - 01:34:52.715

begin with. If you don't want to do this, go somewhere else and do something. So that part we're in agreement with. I don't think that I have the luxury of turning down money because somebody who gives me that money has made that money in some way.

01:34:53.012 - 01:35:06.622

That isn't exactly the way I either wanted them to make it or I don't think I have the luxury of turning to someone who wants to do something for my clients and say, you're not doing this full time, you're not on the other edge, you're not

01:35:06.622 - 01:35:19.750

on the outer edge. I don't want you liking my clients. I don't want you involved in this. I'm not saying that Millard is saying exactly that, but I'm saying if he's heard to say that I think it's just wrong and I think that it's wrong

01:35:19.750 - 01:35:33.189

in the sense that the people who are waiting at the door for immigration lawyers not to be evicted, not to get beaten up by their husband, not to be thrown out of their apartment, not to rot in jail for all those reasons, that none of us

01:35:33.189 - 01:35:45.660

who do this can afford to say to anybody else, you're not worthy of helping us, I'm not coming to you. I'm not gonna beg you for money. I beg for a living these days, and I think it's some of the most important work I've ever done.

01:35:45.890 - 01:35:58.060

I go to all these places. I put on jackets and ties and suits when I don't want to. I'm the only person in the room who looks like me. I try to be as charming as I can, and if I walk out with $50,000 I may

01:35:58.060 - 01:36:10.290

have done more good than I did in the entire year that I practiced legal services law when I came out and did 20 cases because I've now funded a full-time lawyer. So I'm not turning anybody down and I'm going anywhere and I'll take what I can

01:36:10.290 - 01:36:27.189

get and anybody who doesn't want to do this full-time step right up and do it part-time and make $2 million cravat and give me just 1% of it and I'll take it. But quick reply and then we're gonna do it. I'm trying to make the point that there are levels. I don't think people that practice

01:36:27.189 - 01:36:45.890

in large law firms do it just for purely money, never do any public interest work. They're not evil people, but they are levels that you commit and what I'm trying to say is please understand if you are talking about really commitment on the level that makes

01:36:46.270 - 01:37:04.439

probably a fills a gap that will not be filled or filled otherwise, is you're not gonna have anybody that's liking you because you're gonna sue legal aid, you're going to sue the large law firm that's giving money to other people because they are discriminating

01:37:04.439 - 01:37:20.720

in their employment, you're going to not have a friend on the street, and that's where some people need to look to be, and those are the people that you need to encourage and help because those are the people that can't be replaced. From

01:37:20.720 - 01:37:40.520

the audience, anybody, any questions? Go ahead. Picking up on what Bruce Terris is talking about, just it seems to be like I am and just so everybody knows I'm one of the kids that you guys are all talking about. I graduate in a

01:37:40.520 - 01:37:56.729

couple of months. How did we guess that? Uh, so within law school, I understood Bruce saying there's plenty of people who want to do the work, there's not enough places to go when they actually need to get a job, and then after law school when the

01:37:56.729 - 01:38:13.339

population has gone ahead sacrificed and gone ahead and gotten a job in a private bar, you have plenty of work to be done, but just not enough people who are interested in doing it. And my question is how close are we pushing towards legislative

01:38:13.339 - 01:38:26.120

morality here? I mean, what's the population that we're looking at if you go to law school? I mean, what percentage, Feathers says 30% and you know, all due respect, I'm at this law school and I don't know if there is 30% of people who walked

01:38:26.120 - 01:38:39.759

in the door being interested in, you know, coming and hearing this conference and talking about social change, talking about social movements, talking about what it means to be an activist in society, you know, and so my question is dealing with that population, how when

01:38:39.759 - 01:39:01.970

we're talking about instituting mandatory pro bono and you know, forcing people to take these jobs, how close are we getting to legislating morality for people to say, you know, that's not my bag. Not close enough. Not surprised Millard. Cruz, yeah. A profession like a

01:39:01.970 - 01:39:20.890

community can have a sense of what it's about. And the lawyering community ought to have a sense that it's about serving others. And it seemed, I just had, we had a meeting just yesterday actually. I teach at UCLA. And had a meeting of students

01:39:20.890 - 01:39:32.830

interested in going to public interest and civil rights work, and there were 3 young lawyers who appeared on the panel. One was the ACLU. One was a private attorney. One was my assistant. I'm a member of the US Commission on Civil Rights. We're all talking

01:39:32.830 - 01:39:49.541

about the civil rights work that they did, but they all agreed with this panel that they weren't enough, there are far more students interested, I think I've always been far more students interested in doing public interest and civil rights work then there are full-time jobs and

01:39:49.541 - 01:40:07.062

the discussion then went to the role of lawyers who are interested but won't be able to get those jobs and I suggested to them that we as a profession have a responsibility to incorporate that simply in the way we do our business and I

01:40:07.062 - 01:40:24.773

started practicing law before - somebody mentioned how few public service lawyers there were a while back - that's when I graduated. In all of Southern California we had 11 half-time public interest attorney working for the ACLU, and so I was interested in civil rights and

01:40:24.773 - 01:40:42.054

I simply incorporated it into my private practice and we talked about that possibility, and I think it's possible for all lawyers and, beyond those in private industry, in private practice, I think we have to talk about corporate lawyers, about government lawyers, and incorporating

01:40:42.054 - 01:40:57.605

that ethos within the legal profession. I agree with Jerry. It's gotta be part of the morality of lawyers. I mean, that's our job, so it's not that we're saying be goody goody, it's that that's what we're about. But don't get me wrong, I mean, I'm

01:40:57.605 - 01:41:10.819

very well aware that there are more people wanting these jobs than there are jobs. I mean that's where I am right now, you know. What I guess my question is is not necessarily how do we cultivate that within the people. I

01:41:10.819 - 01:41:23.330

mean I'm not worried about people's individual morality. What I'm worried about is precisely what you point out is that how do we change the profession from a kid wanting a kid who's in high school or in middle school or wherever they are saying, I want to

01:41:23.330 - 01:41:34.169

be, I want to go to law school because, you know, I get to drive a big car, but I want to go to law school because I know that going to law school means that I'm going to be changing the world. I mean that's the broadest

01:41:34.169 - 01:41:50.049

brush, but you know, you get that that's of course a far tougher question, and I think no easy answer because it has to do with our society. I don't mean to be overly political, but the Reaganist notion that selfishness is goodness has not particularly helped

01:41:50.049 - 01:42:04.295

those young people who grew up during that time and, and then went on to law school. So I think it has to do with societal interest and there we could be only a partial influence, but law schools where I teach certainly can

01:42:04.295 - 01:42:15.815

be of influence. Law firms can be of influence. All of us have a role, but I think we have to admit it's a partial role in our society. Alex, you have something to say on that. I wanna speak to how to create more full-time jobs. I'm

01:42:15.815 - 01:42:32.501

in favor of making public service part of the ethics of the profession. I don't know how to do that, although I think the University of Pennsylvania's approach ought to be emulated more widely. One little piece of the answer on how to create more full-time public

01:42:32.501 - 01:42:50.262

service jobs might be the philanthropic community. Back in the 60s, litigation, social change litigation was viewed as exciting. There was a lot of funding from the Ford Foundation and others. The bloom has gone off that peach and litigation has got really a bad name now in

01:42:50.262 - 01:43:11.439

the philanthropic community. I think looking back over the last 40 years, a case can be made that the public interest legal community has accomplished an awful lot. And that it deserves more responsiveness from the philanthropic community and if somebody could could effectively figure out the

01:43:11.439 - 01:43:37.640

mechanism for making that approach to the foundations, some small, I don't know whether I'm talking 2%, 5%, 10% increment in the number of full-time jobs might be realized if foundations could be persuaded that this is an appropriate avenue for their largess. Thanks. Any points, questions,

01:43:37.830 - 01:44:05.689

Alan? I fear very broadly to really make the kind of difference, the kind of impact that you all think that our profession want the best. I'm a lawyer. Young lawyers or older lawyers to be a lot more connected with the non-majority, non-rich community.

01:44:06.529 - 01:44:33.359

Communities that most need kinds of services. My experience is that law firms, law schools are pretty insular places. They talk to each other. They talk to their brethren, now a few sisters. And to people who are wealthy, who fund law schools and to fund the

01:44:33.359 - 01:45:01.220

work of big law firms. How do we get law students, young associates, how do we get people to understand the importance of, to appreciate the enormous rewards and joys of actually being with and connecting with the communities that we want to serve so that their notions

01:45:01.220 - 01:45:26.140

of legal ethics and professionalism will be inextricably intertwined with making those connections and doing that work. Bringing people into law schools from those communities that are now deprived. Revising the system to giving those individuals a head start to being able to financially afford good law schools

01:45:26.459 - 01:45:48.470

and being able to educationally keep up while they're in the good. It starts there for one thing. The mission store is one of the great blocks. You don't let people in with big hearts, you don't let people out with small hearts. So you don't shrink their heart

01:45:48.470 - 01:46:05.390

while they are here. Hans, you have a comment on that? I was going to say, maybe less eloquently exactly what what my predecessor here said just now. I think one perhaps small but important element is law school admissions. There is

01:46:05.390 - 01:46:27.660

a great, there is an element involved in all law school admissions, and I think that element of discretion is not sufficiently used these days by most law schools in favoring people who know why they want to go to law school and to look at the,

01:46:27.779 - 01:46:43.740

the good reasons, the real reasons, and not to make $135,000 to start out with. And I think that's part of the answer. Your question, the law student's question back there, I thought was an excellent question because we now

01:46:44.529 - 01:47:01.115

get young associates who tell us I don't want to be told to do public interest work. I'm my own boss. I'm a free agent, and if I don't want to do it, I'm much more interested in mergers and acquisitions. I have a right to say so.

01:47:01.424 - 01:47:18.839

And who are you in the firm to make me do it? I think 20 years ago we wouldn't have heard that, at least they're always individuals, but not very much. We hear it much more, and I think it could help if law school admissions exercise the

01:47:18.839 - 01:47:37.209

discretionary element in admissions a little more in favor of those who go to law school because they want to serve and because they understand that the profession has an obligation beyond making money. But it's got to be more than that because everybody will write that on

01:47:37.209 - 01:47:57.540

their application, right? Everybody will write that. There's no way to enforce that. Well, but admissions officers, the good ones, have certainly learned to go beyond the applications, otherwise they could never exercise any discretion because all of the applications these days sound grand. So I think this element

01:47:57.540 - 01:48:20.950

too can be singled out. Let's take one more question and then we're gonna wrap it up. OK, well, some of you spoke about getting to law, sort of following up on this question. On the one hand, this, you know, sense that

01:48:20.950 - 01:48:56.169

really important ok I have captive audience. So I take the admissions. What do I do? Tobey. Each your classes. Administrative law is something those kids can get up and stand up and do every day of the week. Can

01:48:56.169 - 01:49:09.735

they do constitutional rights? Send them to Andre Dennis. He can do civil rights litigation. There are 1st Amendment shops, 5th Amendment shops, lots of opportunities. Get them out of their classroom, actually out there doing something, and when they're doing it, have them discuss it in class

01:49:09.735 - 01:49:29.941

to make them all excited about it. We're working in administrative law, particularly, I think it's relatively easy to you know, in law school, much depends on whom you glorify. Maybe glorify isn't the best word, but if you glorify the great corporate lawyers in the case

01:49:29.941 - 01:49:47.062

of course you read certain cases and you have to do some of that, but there ought to be a sprinkling of glorious services in the public sector. In administrative law it's certainly easy to find those cases, and I think that's part of your obligation to

01:49:47.062 - 01:50:07.439

give them a decent mix of role models. OK, I think we're gonna, yeah, sure. I have a solo practice and everything that has been said here, we all agree that there is a lot of work to be done in public interest. And yet we keep

01:50:07.439 - 01:50:24.669

talking about law firms, law firms, law firms. Well, If you want to do public interest work, you don't have to go to a law firm. You can do it on your own. When Reagan cut back so that legal services could no longer do immigration work, I

01:50:24.669 - 01:50:41.680

said, heck with this. I'll just do it myself and ain't nobody gonna tell me what I'm gonna do. So I went out and my child had to sit under my table because I couldn't afford daycare and I had to shop at yard sales, but I did

01:50:41.680 - 01:51:02.870

what I liked and my office, we actually have a policy of scheduling our working corporate clients on one day and the rest of the time we have the poor population. But why do we do this? Because it's because the corporate clients don't like the smell

01:51:02.870 - 01:51:18.430

when they come into our office and they say can't you smell it? I said, no, but it's not the money. I know that with the big law firms, with the young associates, they don't really lose a whole lot of money by doing the pro bono

01:51:18.430 - 01:51:37.520

work. It's not the why, why do so many solo practitioners, why are they willing to do the pro bono work and willing to drive to lobbies? Nobody has talked about the real joys of doing pro bono work. Nobody has talked about seeing a family grow from

01:51:37.520 - 01:52:00.430

a single mother who has come a long way and eventually actually graduating from law school. Nobody has talked about going to the graduation of kids whose parents came here with nothing except the clothes that some charity gave them before they got on the plane

01:52:00.430 - 01:52:16.740

to the United States. Those are the things that are really, really rewarding and sometimes I think to myself, I wish I could afford to take a trip, a week long vacation because as solo practitioners, you can't do it. And then the very next

01:52:16.740 - 01:52:35.660

day, someone comes in and says, hey, I'm graduating from high school and I only have 4 invitations and so my grandmother says that she won't come if you wanted to come. Now. There's nothing. I can go on vacation for a whole

01:52:35.660 - 01:52:51.520

week, but I, there's nothing to replace that feeling when you are one of the four that this kid is going to invite to the graduation. But nobody has talked about that. It's all money, money, money, but we are public interest people and we should think about

01:52:52.180 - 01:53:11.990

the human side. And it is the human side that we're talking about. Nobody has talked about that. I think we're going to, I think we're going. And on that note, and let me say I think we've all had those feelings. The question is how we expand

01:53:11.990 - 01:53:24.790

that not only for ourselves who practice public interest law and know those feelings about the client who comes in or the family or the a person in prison who's released, but how we kind of expand that, incorporate that into our culture both in the law schools

01:53:24.790 - 01:53:35.379

and the law firms. So we're going to end it now. We're over the time. I just want to thank an extraordinary group of people for some extraordinary comments, and this is just the start. We've got 2 days to follow through on some of these issues. Thanks

01:53:35.379 - 01:53:43.620

a lot.