Lawyers have long held (and have many times deserved) a sour reputation in Western culture as thieves, charlatans and deceivers — the stuff that earns one-way tickets to Malebolge, the Eighth Circle of Dante’s Inferno.
Will Rogers once pithily witted, “Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.”
University law students, though, are bucking those stereotypes in big ways. Some 70 law students deserve praise, in fact, for setting their books aside for a few hours to volunteer for 11 area nonprofit organizations on April 3.
On this Public Service Day, some students volunteered at Spencer Butte’s Cascades Raptor Center, an animal hospital and nature center. Others painted walls at the Boys and Girls Club of Emerald Valley. Others still composted for the Northwest Youth Corps’ organic garden.
These selfless undertakings, among others, are part of the new Oregon Law’s Public Interest Public Service Program, and have earned law students well-earned appreciation.
“Having the law students here is a huge help,” explained the Cascades Raptors Center’s Laurin Coggins. “We have a volunteer staff organization, so we get a lot done when we have extra help.”
Since PIPS’ inception, the number of reported pro bono hours donated by University law students has laudably ballooned from 4,680 to 11,214. As a result, University students won Oregon’s State Bar’s Pro Bono Challenge for the third consecutive year. Those 11,214 hours, donated by 112 law students, make up 71.5 percent of the state total of 15,686 donated hours.
Take for example the tireless efforts of graduating law student Sarah Drescher, who recently received the law school’s Outstanding Service Impact Award.
Drescher has spent most of her estimated 200 pro bono hours working with the American Civil Liberties Union to relieve overcrowding in the Jackson County Jail. Thanks in part to her efforts, the jail settled with the ACLU and agreed to get enough beds for all prisoners.
Its impact on the community, not to mention the sheer number of hours of community service donated by Drescher and her peers, certainly make PIPS one of the best University programs created in recent memory, and program leaders have their sights set higher.
“Ultimately, we want to act as a clearinghouse where all of the students can go through us for their community service needs,” said Lauren Sommers, service program secretary and first-year law student.
If the lawyers of tomorrow are anything like the University’s law student volunteers of today, stereotypes of lawyers as manipulative, greedy, self-interested criminals might be as passé as trial by battle.