Law Students Make Law Firm Fire Client
A post on the Legal Ethics Forum blog links to a story that strikes a blow against the independence of attorneys or at least the ability of a firm to represent a client whose position may not be politically correct in all circles. The linked story indicates that students at a prestigious law school put so much pressure on a prestigious law firm that recruited at the school, that the law firm declined to do certain work for the client that the students found objectionable. A sad day in academia if you ask me. For a related topic, I refer you to Larry Ribstein's post about whether some schools have a liberal or conservative bias. The story about what law students were up in arms about reminded me of a lecture I attended this week by author Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D., who wrote, among other books: The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.
UPDATE: More thoughts on this story from the Right Coast blog.
To play, umm, devil's advocate, I believe we as lawyers can and should pick cases that do not contradict our moral sensibilities. These sensibilities, in turn, are informed by our belief structure and the community in which we operate. So the R&G decision may well have been a legitimate and informed one, not so much bowing to student pressure as recognizing the validity of the students' concern.
A less charitable explanation would be that R&G didn't care one way or the other, but saw potential revenues from this client (particularly in light of the antidiscrimination issues surrounding the client's plans) to be less than the likely damage that could be caused by objectors at Harvard. The firm's decision thus would be one of pure economics, which our society generally doesn't fault TOO much.
To me, this situation points out a different problem: it's hard to be proud of the work you do, when you work in a large law firm. I'd expect the attorney representing Catholic Charities may well have believed in the client's cause, but the representation was quashed because of the (externally instigated) concerns of others within the firm. These are the kinds of personal/moral compromises that pervade large firm culture, and the ones that make it hard to practice law for a large firm in return for anything other than a paycheck.