Dear John,
For Americans who once felt proud of our standing in the world and our contributions to the well-being of other countries, the past few months have been painful. LDAD board member Walter H. White Jr. wrote movingly for the Fulcrum about the impact of this administration’s actions around the globe:
In less than 100 days, President Donald Trump has destroyed relationships that have existed for 250 years. The list of alienated friends is growing, with potentially dangerous consequences for the United States. And the recent and shocking failure of the country’s entire national security leadership to protect deeply sensitive information about an attack, seeds further reasons to distrust a long-trusted voice.
To read the full article, see: The End of the American Era
With last week’s capitulation of five more global law firms to deals that purportedly lack precision and finality, only one point seems clear. Leaders of the reputedly best law firms on the planet are giving the President of the United States permission to participate in running key functions of their firms in exchange for substantial uncertainty, significant risk to internal cohesion and future recruitment, and the abandonment of long-held values promoting inclusion and opportunities for historically marginalized communities.
Young law students trying to make sense of their future profession must be watching all the knee-bending with a particular sense of trepidation. In an opinion article for Bloomberg Law, LDAD executive director Lauren Stiller Rikleen wrote:
The placement of patriotic words around the nature of the pro bono cases the firms will be expected to accept obscures the real dilemma that will arise when trying to assign cases that are anathema to the civil rights and social justice causes that have historically energized associates in their pro bono work.
The article suggests a series of questions that law students could consider asking when they are interviewing with prospective law firm employers to better understand the culture they will be entering. See: We Need Law Students to Clean the Stain on the Legal Profession
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Lawyers Defending American Democracy
