Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School (ISBN 1558492348)

Irritating and Disappointing:
This book is a compendium of irritating whinings by a naive liberal intent on saving the world. I was very much disappointed. Skip. Or borrow the book from the library.

He Should Have Dropped Out:
This book is, well, strange. The author is obviously bright, and possesses at least some degree of self-awareness. Despite this, it seems to have taken him three years to figure out what should have been obvious in three weeks: namely, that he had no desire to study law or to become a lawyer. This passage (pp. 130, 131) is typical: "What I did care about - or thought I did - was my third class: Poverty Law.... But if poverty law was the right field to go into, (the professor) never convinced us that it was interesting. He said that poverty lawyers should use arbitrary rules to benefit their clients, exploit the loopholes, because 'the poor do not have resources, all they have are the rules'. But the rules were boring. It was not interesting to know that when a rule says you have ten days to file, you do or do not count the days at both ends. But that was what poverty law entailed: knowing the arcane rules involved in such things as meeting income and the asset requirements of various programs. During a break one day, I heard one student tell another, 'This is as bad as tax'. Maybe we were just painfully naïve, but we still held out the hope that doing good, if not remunerative, could at least be interesting". Well, law is concerned largely with "arcane rules". What did he expect? Kahlenberg's solution to his dislike of law school was to opt for as many non-legal elective courses as possible. Most of these were taught at the Kennedy School of Government, which he greatly preferred: "Its purpose - to take on the great social and political problems of our time, involving issues such as health care, foreign relations, and poverty - was so much more grand than that of the law school (which is concerned with) a narrow field more akin to accounting" (p. 173). Yet even the Kennedy School is attacked for being insuccifiently theoretical: "the school's emphasis on mechanics and management over vision is a perenial concern" (pp. 173, 174). Kahlenberg writes, at considerable length, about the need for Harvard Law graduates to perform "public service": a phrase which he never defines but clearly restricts to working in Washington as a staff member for a powerful Senator or an important Senate committee. He fails to explain why this sort of employment is more relevant or admirable than the private practice of law, of which he writes disparagingly (p.155): "By the end of the summer, I had come to believe that most high-priced attorneys did not wear white hats or black hats; they wore no hats at all. They just came to work every day to do jobs that were of little social importance". I would respectfully suggest the following: (1) the vast majority of jobs in this world can be argued to have "little social importance" (which in any case is an obviously subjective description); (2) the writing of speeches for some hack politician, or policy papers that will be read by few and acted upon by none, is a job of less "social importance" than the provision of legal services to private clients. Although I myself am a lawyer, I freely admit that it's not for everyone. Why did it take Kahlenberg so long to figure out that it was not for him? It was only at the tail end of his final year, upon deciding not to take the Bar exam or to accept a job with a law firm, that realization set in: "I wondered whether I had gone off the deep end. Being a press secretary had nothing to do with law whatsoever. Had I just wasted three years of my life and a lot of money? Was law school a big mistake?" (p. 223). Yes, Richard, it was.

Whiny limousine liberal:
If you want to read the story of a guy who thinks it would really be nifty to do important public service work while still pulling down six figures, this is the book for you. Kahlenberg makes law students like myself who are legitimately dedicated to public interest law look like idiots. From tacky comments about distinguished lawyers he labels "sell-outs" for their choice to move to private work to the hilarious account of his (very sincere, I'm *sure*) questioning an interviewer at Arnold and Porter about whether a liberal would feel comfortable at the firm (like they're going to tell you no) the book is pretty useless. Kahlenberg wants you to think he's really upset that he just tried and tried and couldn't get a public interest job, but let's face it -- he went to Harvard Law. If he was the least bit honest at any time, the book would be worth reading. There's no way Coles read this book before agreeing to write the foreword.

Inspiring and thought-provoking!:
Broken Contract is the chronicle of Richard Kahlenberg's struggle to justify his classical liberal ideals with the harsh reality of law school: most entering law students have a desire to use the privilege of an education in the law to help the poor and downtrodden of society, "but upon graduating, the vast majority (scramble) to fill the ranks of the nation's top corporate law firms" (from the front flap). Through the framework of his struggle with these powerful opposing forces, Kahlenberg presents us with a fascinating look at Harvard Law School, its culture and the nature of the law education of the late 1980s. He paints a portrait of everyday life as a law student, scrambling for Law Review positions, summer internships, judicial clerkships and ultimately, for a job after graduation. As Kahlenberg searches for a job and dogmatically asks each interviewer about the firm's pro bono work (he is interested in little more), he occasionally comes across as an elitist; his sense of noblesse oblige is mildly nauseating. Throughout the book, Kahlenberg operates on the assumption that class-action lawsuits are morally right, that cases brought by poor people are just, that all big corporations are evil, that people have to sell-out to earn big salaries and that "conservatives" are willing to do anything to guarantee the rights of the rich. However, don't let these relatively small negative aspects of the book deter you from reading it, even if you identify yourself as a conservative. His larger point is this: "since each of us struggles daily with good and bad impulses, we might want to restructure our social institutions in order to make it a little easier to do good" (235). This book does not target a certain ideology, except perhaps greed. Kahlenberg does not pull any punches and the targets of his criticisms span the ideological spectrum (although he does let a few more land on the right side of the spectrum). Broken Contract rates a full four and a half stars. Broken Contract challenged me to think critically about my motivations for attending law school and broadened my perspective on life in general and on the legal community in particular.

Interesting Point, But Poorly Written:
This book has some strong points, but they are outweighed, in my opinion, by the negatives. First, in terms of subject matter, Kahlenberg's very liberal--despite what he may profess, he seems (to a moderate like me) much more liberal than your average Democrat--slant to absolutely everything about which he writes taints the entire book. Apparently, he seems to think that only liberals can provide useful public service or enhance the nation's government. One might think that, with seven years of formal education, Kahlenberg might realize that things are not so black-and-white, and that people of all ideologies can be (and are) public servants dedicated to helping their fellow citizens. When it came to the actual structure of the book, I tired of his endless rants on how HLS can change people. Yes, I understand--and can sympathize--with his point, but I prefer not to be absolutely bombarded with a single idea over and over again without so much as a single additional insight after the first 100 pages. Moreover, detailed descriptions of two or three firm interviews were interesting--fascinating, in fact. But having to read what amounted to the same story (with different firms and different attorneys that eventually all blended together) some 20-30 times was tedious at best. Once again, I get his point that all corporate firms are the same, that they are extremely successful at attracting HLS students away from public work, and that they work against progressive change and the common good rather than helping the public. But there has to be a less mind-numbingly dull and long-winded--not to mention pretentious and arrogant--way to communicate the point. If you absolutely must read this--as you probably should if you have any intention of going to HLS or any other "name" law school--borrow it from the library, but do not waste your money purchasing the book.