Legally Blocked - The Corporate Crackdown on Students

Things can be pretty tough for law students these days. When students are in school, you hope that at least they get a chance to do interesting and important clinical work (like Elle Woods over here) before becoming slaves to enormous student debt, which makes public service careers nearly impossible for most. 

In fact, one of the best things about many law schools is their clinical programs, which not only give students real world experience, but often greatly serve the public interest, allowing student involvement in cases challenging civil rights violations (here, here), as well as corporate misconduct. 

The fact that sometimes law students and clinics, in exercising cherished academic freedom, take on difficult causes shouldn’t be news.  But suddenly, it is so much news that the New York Times had to address it today in an editorial called “First, They Get Rid of the Law Clinics.” (BTW, is this a take off of the “First they came for …” poem about German inaction during Hitler’s rise to power or Shakespeare's quote “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers” or maybe a combination? I guess who cares – the whole thing’s sick.)

The editorial is responding to the new backlash from corporate America to try to stop law school clinics from suing corporate miscreants by lobbying lawmakers to threaten the schools’ funding.  The most heated situation to date involves the University of Maryland Law School, whose environmental law clinic sued huge poultry company Perdue Farms for pollution.  This was “the first effort in the state to hold a poultry company accountable for the environmental impact of its chicken suppliers.”  The backlash sparked a huge outcry from law professors and others (some of which is described here today by Phoebe A. Haddon, Dean and Professor of Law, who also describes an ultimate compromise).

But Maryland is far from the only school where this is happening.  As the Times reported earlier, it’s also a problem at Rutgers in New Jersey, Tulane in Louisiana and the University of Michigan.  The Times reports, “’We’re seeing a very strong pushback from deep-pocket interests, and that pushback is creating a chilling effect on many clinics,’ said Robert R. Kuehn, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, citing a recent survey he conducted that found that more than a third of faculty members at legal clinics expressed fears about university or state reaction to their casework and that a sixth said they had turned down unpopular clients because of these concerns.”

Hey, if that doesn't grab you, imagine a world without the Legally Blonde franchise.  I am just not sure I want to live in that world!