Many aspiring lawyers, motivated to pursue a law degree by ambitions of exacting justice for vulnerable parties, arrive at law school to discover the career paths presented there instead point them in the direction of Big Law’s corporate defense trenches.

Burdened by student loans, rising lawyers often find the base compensation of $215,000 at many Am Law 50 firms enough to convince them to join a 300-lawyer litigation practice where they defend the very corporate powers they vowed to challenge from the other side of the “V.”