The Club

There's an early 1960s film comedy (a genera which should be of its own class, as they tend to fit a pattern) based on an early 1960s or late 1950s musical comic play (again, should be its own genera) called How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.  The farcical film follows the life of an ambitious window washer who seeks to rise to the top of a larger corporation through the exploitation of personalities and connections, including, in one instance, a suggestion (false) that he attended the same university as one of his superiors.  The movie is genuinely funny, but highly dated.  Of course (spoiler alert, sort of) the protagonist rises to the top in spite of improbable odds (at the very top, it turns out the CEO was also a window washer originally) but it actually manages to satire a few things fairly accurately.  The school connection item was probably accurate at that time, when college degrees were much more rare, and even the window washer CEO was semi accurate, the film having come at the end of the Non Certification era, but its obviously dated enough (particularly in its depiction of women, who are all secretaries in the film).  I only mention it as the depiction of a common school background remains oddly true in one area. . . graduating from an Ivy League Law School.

Now, connections are what they are, and to some great extent, they're simply natural.  If a person shares your background and interests, you'll know them, and that's a connection that somebody else is unlikely to have.  That's just the way that works.  But in the law, Harvard law degrees in particular, have a strange aura that attaches to them as if the graduates of that school know a whole lot more law, a whole lot better, than everyone else. 

Those who follow blogs that address concerns of law students know that there's vast amounts of cyber ink spilled on the topic of "top tier" law schools, with the routine suggestion being that if you didn't graduate from a "top tier" law firm, you might as well have dropped out of school in the 3d grade.  What that hyper excited commentary really means is that if you want into one of the super-sized law firms that pay high dollars in exchange for their new hires having no outside life whatsoever, you must go to a "top tier" school. That's probably unfortunately correct.  But Harvard law is something else, occupying a position, in my view, somewhat akin to that of the English Royal Family. That is, graduating from it makes a person royalty, whether or not they otherwise deserve it.

For example, President Obama is a Harvard Law graduate.  Mitt Romney is a Harvard Law graduate.  They're both very intelligent men, to be sure, but to what extent has simply being a Harvard Law graduate opened doors for them?  Well, probably not that much in Romney's case, given that his family background gave him an advantage in life that many would not have, but it certainly opened doors in President Obama's case.  This is not their fault, and I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with their taking advantage of that.  It's just odd how there's a widespread assumption that being a graduate of Harvard Law makes a person some sort of super lawyer. 

Indeed, graduating from Harvard Law is like gaining admittance to a club.  To fail in life after graduating from Harvard Law would take more effort than succeeding.  You'd really have to work at it. All the time you'll hear that some Harvard Law grad has been a Supreme Court clerk, or is working at some think tank, or the like.  And, of course, you'll hear of the practicing law in some big firm too.  They seem to be able to go where they want based on that degree.

Well, is it that much better?   I guess I have no real frame of reference, but I read the opinions of the courts and whatnot, and sometimes hear their opinions in other venues, and frankly, they're not that much more erudite than the best lawyers out of any other law school.  And I suppose I don't hear from the Harvard grads who aren't in a public venue. 

The law is the law, no matter where you study it, and a good legal education is the result of good students and good professors. The good students exist everywhere.  Are Harvard's professors that much better?  I really wonder.

I guess part of this comes from a very local prospective on my part.  I've tried a bunch of cases in court.  I've seen some really brilliant courtroom work.  I've appeared in front of a lot of state and Federal judges.  But so far, I have yet to come across a Harvard lawyer in any courtroom setting I've been in.  I have no doubt that they'd be individually good, but there's a lot of individually good people out there who have no connection to Harvard Law.

Well, so what?  Should this matter?

Well, yes it should. Again this year a lot of big time courts, and big time entities, will employ Harvard Law grads, right out of school, because they are Harvard Law grads, in part.  That means that these institutions are fishing from a pretty small pond, and it should be remembered that even a guppy can be a big fish in a cup.  Perhaps they should cast their nets a bit broader.  I'd like to see, for example, a decade where every Supreme Court clerk came out of a land grant college law school, and all think tanks employed guys who were, let's say, accountants, rather than law school grads, to mix the institutions up a bit.