The E-Guide to Public Service at America’s Law Schools is the only publication in which you can find statistics on law student engagement in public service. This information is a helpful gauge of the interests of the students and the strength of the public interest clinical curriculum and public interest programming. You can look at what students have done over the year or at what the graduating class engaged in over the course of their time at the law school. Questions to ask prospective schools include:

• How many students enrolled in a clinic this year?
• How many students are enrolled in a field placement?
• How many students have found other ways to get credit for public service, such as a course with a service component?
• How many students reported pro bono service? How many hours did they perform?
• How many students had a public interest job during the school year or the summer?
• How many students reported engaging in community service?

Not all schools collect this information, but many are working on it. Collecting this data provides useful information in assessing the effectiveness of programs. In addition, as with the recording of grades, collection of this information makes it possible for schools to recognize extraordinary accomplishment.

When it comes to pro bono work, you should keep in mind that the number of pro bono hours reported by law students is always incomplete. Many students do not report their service. Even in mandatory programs, which are likely to have the best picture of the service being performed, students typically underreport.

Tracking student activity in the summer is also challenging. Those who accept a field placement for the summer are easily tracked because they register for credit. Students who receive school funds for public service summer jobs are also easily tracked. Students who take a job with no compensation– or with no compensation from the school – may or may not report their placement to the school.

The number of graduates who begin their careers in public service is one measure of a law school’s success in producing lawyers concerned about social justice. All schools report job information for the most recent graduating class to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) for publication in their annual NALP Directory of Law Schools (For more information about NALP, go to www.nalp.org.). Schools report separately the number of graduates securing government employment and public interest/nonprofit organization employment. These numbers are also reported in The E-Guide.

Some lawyers who begin their careers in private practice or in judicial clerkships will transition into full-time public service at some point in their professional lives – first jobs give only a snapshot of the alumni population. One factor is that there is a paucity of entry-level public interest positions. The E-Guide captures information about the judicial clerks who go directly into public service -- when schools have that information. The bottom line is that because reporting mechanisms are imperfect and do not track post-graduation activity, it makes sense to ask law school professionals about their graduates in public service beyond the initial first job statistics.

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