Interested in Serving the Public Interest? Become a Corporate Lawyer
Do you remember your law school admissions essay? You know, the one wherein you touted your fanciful and borderline absurd desire to save the world? Funny, isn’t it, that we all more or less made the same sales pitch? Well, if you weren’t full of shit like the rest of us (as it turns out) and you still want to be a do-gooder, your best bet in doing your part is cashing in as a corporate lawyer and aiding efficient capital formation and deployment.
“You want to help make society a better place? You want to eliminate poverty? Become a corporate lawyer. Help businesses grow, so that they can create jobs and provide goods and services that make people’s lives better.”
Any lawyer, whether corporate or otherwise, can contribute to the improvement of society, from one’s own particular practice. However eliminating poverty is not by itself sufficient for such amelioration. The creation of jobs must go along with improving the quality of education at school and the upbringing of children in the family. For both those goals, more than money, is necessary. A society must have values, principles and morals. In 2008 and the 21st century the world and humanity appear to be in transit. Unfortunately where to, for what purpose, and whether for the better or the worse, is largely unpredictable.
We knew you were full of shit, since you are not a fan of helping people. :) But can you honestly tell me that being a corporate lawyer and helping big businesses alienate workers more will fix social issues? Whoever anon is above is correct… fix the education system. NCLB is working so well as is funding schools with property taxes. This way you can ensure the poor stay poor–brillant idea from the Republican camp. Hey if the President can get straight C’s when they give those away to legacies and even he reads at a 3rd grade level– who needs education?
I’ll have a stand-alone post on the education system in a few days, but the short answer to your question is yes: business growth coupled with corporate social responsibility is the key to an improved standard of living for society as a whole.
The Republican party as it stands is a complete disgrace, and has criminally strayed from its core principles. I also agree that NCLB has been a massive failure, but the only way to fix the education system and to stop the perpetual cycle of poverty that many communities face, is to have a dramatic shift in strategy in the way these problems are dealt with. The first step toward this shift would be to cut the umbilical cord connecting these communities with counterproductive government programs.
Again, I promise to have more on this soon.
Good hearing from you :)