Practicing Law as a Communist

I've heard being a lawyer is a good job for someone on the far left, especially a public defender or labor lawyer. In theory, you would be able to challenge the bourgeois state and corporations on a daily basis, mainly by arguing with representatives of capital. But does it really accomplish anything in the grand scheme of things? I feel like if you could really make a change as a lawyer, they wouldn't allow you to be one.

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matthaiduk.com/2015/03/25/setting-every-damn-case-for-trial-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-my-reign-of-pain-as-a-public-defender/
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No, capitalism can't be reformed.

...

Hypothetically, yes you might be able to use porky's own system against them. In practice, you'd be limited to helping a few proles stay out of jail as a public defender, while not being really being able to do anything significant against porky's armies of much better lawyers.

American law student here.

I suppose so. That's what I'm planning to do anyway.
"Challenge" is optimistic.
No job is going to change anything in the grand scheme of things, sorry pal.

From what I understand, the system seems to be designed intentionally to fuck over PDs and their clients. In the more reactionary states like Mississipi, PD offices are intentionally underfunded. A PD might be assigned hundreds of clients a day, which means literally just a couple of minutes to help prepare a case for someone facing double digit jail sentences.

Also, the fucked up nature of the system (e.g. the "trial tax") means a PD spends a great deal of of their time convincing their clients to accept a prosecutor's plea bargain - hardly a badass anti-establishment activity.

I was thinking labor law might be better, but it would be hard to survive if your only clients are minimum wage proletarians.

Nice. Good luck! How are you liking law school? What's the political composition of the student body?

My girlfriend is a lawyer.

I'm not a fan of the court or legal system and we disagree about "justice" and law enforcement from time to time.

But consulting her about direct actions has probably kept me and my friends out of prison. Plus she can't snitch on me because we have lawyer-client privilege. Win/win.

Every little bit helps user. If keeping a couple proles out of prison is all OP accomplishes it's still better than sitting here all day debating theory.

based

Corporate lawyers, prosecutors, and judges are almost universally scum.

I'm a little surprised that so many proles are "woke" to how shitty cops are but don't care about prosecutors or judges. A cop's job is basically to collect evidence on suspicious people. A prosecutor's job is to send people to prison.

Their job is about giving the sentence a bourgeois "morality", which is even worse.

Class traitor American law student here. The legal system here is set up to change things extremely slowly. You can do "good" things with the law here and there, but you're not going to change the world. Also, be aware that you can't get PSLF working for a union. You might want to work at the NLRB or FLRA first.

That's one of the secrets of law. Obviously the background is that law school is a financial death trap. If you're not set on a region, be very fucking wary of lower ranked schools unless you get good scholarships. Your debt can completely determine your career path.
Nothing good pays well. That's a big deal with the debt lots of law school grads have. Additionally the more good you're doing, the harder it can be to find a job. Getting into biglaw can be easier than getting a full time position at a good public defender's office, for example. Biglaw can afford to hire tens of new associates almost $200k/each. Legal aid offices can't afford one new guy at like $40k/year.
But wait! There's more! If you sell out, you'll probably get conflicted out of representing some of your ex-firm's clients once you leave to live out your bleeding heart wet dream. I can't remember how the exact 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧ethics🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 rules work, but it can make it harder to find plaintiff-side work.
Probably depends on the school, but it will probably be overwhelmingly liberal everywhere. Big fedsoc presence at my school.
It sucks. Be an engineer.

Fuck this. Public interest lawyers are mostly dumb liberals in the world's most expensive therapy session. If anything, you should do policy work. There are enough naive narcissists who're gonna be the next hotshot, big dick litigator. Stupid. Be an autist and push policy instead.

It's ok. The thing is there isn't really an opportunity to think about anything we're studying critically since we're basically forced to just study things as they are and think about their immediate reasons and not the underlying class reasons.
I'm pretty sure everyone is just a normal liberal. The furthest left anything anyone has said in class is one black woman who said she didn't think everything in the Constitution was automatically right because it was written by slave owners. I go to a fairly prestigious (i.e. bourgeois) law school though, so it may be that there are some law schools with at least a few communists.
This user is basically right about everything except that going into public policy will almost certainly be no better than anything else you're thinking about.

Actually, I have a kind of funny story about the political composition of my class. At the beginning of the year we had what was basically diversity training. At one point we got a sheet with a lit of diversity categories, like race, sex, religion, etc., and one of them was military veteran status(???). At the end of the session one white guy spoke up and said that, while he was definitely aware of racism and whatnot that he would never face, he had grown up poor and even been homeless before, but class was totally ignored in the session. A black girl seemed kind of perturbed and said that he still didn't face her struggles (which, again, he had already acknowledged when he spoke). Then a black guy said that he had been poor too and he probably had a more similar life to the white guy than the black girl, which I don't think any of the other students knew how to respond to.
Anyway, most of these people are at best useless and will be sent to the countryside after the revolution.

I'm working towards going to school for law currently (taking LSAT soon). How difficult is the material and how are classes structured? I've heard it's not quite like any other degree program.

One of the only things Pol Pot did right.

wew buddy whatever you say dude hahaha
rarely if ever
on the off chance you become a trial lawyer you're going to be wasting your time and mental energy on irrelevant shit

everybody goes into that field thinking they're atticus finch
every Good Cop goes in thinking they're frank serpico or a clint eastwood character
lived experience creates monsters

check out autoadmit and rethink your trajectory

First of all, everyone is going to tell you not to go to law school and they're probably right, if only for financial reasons. I would only go if you fall into one of three categories:
1) You get into a truly elite law school which places nearly all of its graduates in high-paying positions. There are maybe 6 of these.
2) You get a scholarship offer of full tuition, or at least enough of your tuition that if you can't find a job in law after you graduate you can pay off your loans working as a wageslave. Even then it's probably not worth it at a low-tier school if only because you could do a lot of other things in those three years and come out with much better job prospects.
3) Your dad owns a firm.
As for law school classes: your first year it's almost all reading case briefs, except for your classes on research and writing (the only worthwhile classes imo). The material itself isn't actually that hard but keeping up with everything at once is a nightmare and is totally unlike what you'll have to do as an actual lawyer. They say they're getting us to "think like lawyers" but I am highly suspicious of that; they're definitely training us to think a certain way, though. I'm only a 1L myself so I can't attest to this, but most people say your first year is the worst.

A lawyer's role in a radical movement is fairly limited since the American legal system is quite literally designed to legitimize and carry out the oppression of the working class. Also in law school they will brainwash you into thinking that liberalism unironically works. The biggest unironic liberals are always lawfags. Read pic related. There is a chapter on lawyers and the largely irrelevant effect they have on radical movements and radical change.

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I'm going to respond in line with your post structure so it's direct and coherent when you get around to reading it.
First of all, I've already heard a lot of bad stuff about the job, schooling, and even a bit about my particular odds of success going into it. I'm covering my bases trying to convince myself not to do it, and if I don't get a good LSAT I'm going to seriously consider not taking it a second time and just looking at other education options. I have some meetings set up to meet lawyers I know through friends and whatnot to get their take on it.
1) I have done well on timed practice exams already, and this is one of my sink or swim variables. If I cannot get into one of those schools, it may not be economically worth it to do at all.
2) I have considered this as a plan B to your first category. If I can easily get from a full-ride scholarship school (of lower tiers) to working easily, then maybe I can get my previous (almost paid-off, undergraduate government loans) nullified via being a public defender and the like. They offer ways to get debt forgiveness for doing public sector work last I checked.
3) Obviously not, lol.
I have a few philosophy of law books; have you been able to take any classes about this topic yet or is it just mostly case briefs and legal writing?
If the first year is the worst, then that's very reassuring.

No, those classes exist but they're not available to 1Ls. You don't get any say in your schedule your first year.

Cool, thank you for your initial reply and this last one.

Reading autoadmit is hilarious… I had forgotten it existed. Nevertheless, things look pretty damn grim for the world, let alone the USA. Take out big loans, get a "useless" education, and watch it all fall apart. Bad things are coming, whatever they may be, the whole house of cards isn't doing too well. It isn't going to stop people from living, and neither should the impotence of any given vocation to affect the power structure.

Better to waste time doing something you can sort of enjoy yet cripples your spirit than doing nothing and being crippled all the same. Better to have something useful to give when the time comes it'll be asked of you. People are only doing their best, and if they fall prey to the temptations of capitalist offerings and diversions, that's just them following the bread crumbs of those incentives. There's no stopping the inevitable.

You should lighten up about it. Most people know there aren't any Atticus Finch's in the world, and the real Frank Serpico wasn't anything like the guy shown in the movie. Eastwood's big cop roles are all fashie stormtroopers of death for angry white guys to fawn over and desire to be; aspiring to be that way is kind of like aspiring to be Richard Ramirez with a badge, it's not realistic (movies are not realistic).

I was going to get Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope, but I'll give this a read first.

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Being a public defender is notoriously shitty and depressing. At least, for the left-wing public defenders I've heard from. If you think you'd be good at it, go for it, but please for the love of God earn yourself some money. You can use those skills if you need to later on.

Most of this comes from the fact that public defenders don't get paid much either.

You can do a lot of good work as a lawyer defending workers and consumers from porkies, but don't expect to be able to make any structural change. It's a fine job to get as a socialist, as long as you choose to defend the little guy and don't go for the money. The world always needs more good public defenders.

(me)

I'm supposing that OP doesn't care too much about the money or work pressure. He just wants to do good for the world.

Aside from the pay issue, what are their main complaints about the job?

The main thing that worries me is that it seems like if you really try to upset the status quo, the other side will retaliate by making your life as difficult as possible. I suppose you can never take things "too far", from the perspective of the judges and prosecution.

In this article (worth reading IMO), a former PD talks about how his anti-system attitude eventually got him fired:

matthaiduk.com/2015/03/25/setting-every-damn-case-for-trial-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-my-reign-of-pain-as-a-public-defender/

…

That sounds really Kafkaesque.

But yeah, I agree, don't be an idiot. You aren't going to beat the system on your own. Don't try "jamming it up" or whatever. If you do, be sure to make a media storm about it.

Make sure you read An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States before you take Con Law. Also, google Evgeny Pashukanis if (or Vyshinsky if you like to larp) instead of taking jurisprudence.

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Good luck bro, doubt that.