Making elite lawyers

Harvard Law School is more than a law school; it's a cultural icon. Home to the best and the brightest, training ground for the corporate elite. Surprisingly enough, however, an overwhelming majority of students in any entering class identifies itself as liberal to leftist in its political orientation. Then why does the majority of any graduating class choose corporate law practice over public interest work? What happens to students in those three years between. Orientation and commencement? Making Elite Lawyers is the first detailed study of legal education at America's premier law school. Drawing on in-depth interviews, student questionnaires, and his own classroom observations, author Robert Granfield documents the conservatizing effects of the Harvard legal education on a broad cross-section of the student population, paying particular attention to the fate of women, students of color, and those from working-class. Backgrounds at Harvard Law School. In his analysis of the legal curriculum, Granfield shows how the boot-camp of first-year law school marks the emergence of a finely-tuned legal consciousness which comes to value gamesmanship over ideals, and competition and victory