Is it possible to balance a legal career with any kind of personal life? Our Hot Topic roundup gives it a shot.
One solution is for law schools to discriminate against women applicants as the undergraduate colleges now do, with all their talk of “balance” and their special football programs just for the guys. The Constitution stops state schools from discriminating, but most scholars believe that the private schools are still free to sort by sex. This is a blunt instrument, and I am not recommending it. Half or more of the female lawyers are still working away at the bar. And if the women are hungry and ambitious, law offers a very effective way of earning a decent living. But taxpayers do deserve some relief from this very inefficient version of The Dating Game.
Here it is. Men and women should get the same access to law school � same tuition, same scholarships, etc. If, however, 10 years after graduation, the law school graduate is not working full time at some job for which law school is a reasonable preparation, he, or more likely, she, will have to give the school back the money that it spent educating him or her over and above whatever was paid in tuition. The refunds would be put in a fund for scholarships for law students who could not otherwise afford to go to law school.
I’d even go further and say that at private law schools, which are allowed to discriminate by sex, the funds should go to women who could not otherwise afford to go to law school. Women are still disproportionately poorer than men are, and families are still more willing to pay to educate their sons than their daughters. I’d be willing to bet that women otherwise too poor to go to law school wouldn’t be so quick to quit.
Linda Hirshman is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and the author of “Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World” (Viking 2006). She can be reached at [email protected]. This article was originally published in the National Law Journal, a Recorder affiliate based in New York City.
