Broken Contract [Paperback]

Richard D. Kahlenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1999 | ISBN-10: 1558492348 | ISBN-13: 978-1558492349

A portrait of the culture of a top law school.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"How is it that so many students can enter law school determined to promote liberal ideals and leave three years later to counsel the least socially progressive elements of our society?" Kahlenberg focuses on this remarkable transformation in his memoir of his Harvard Law School (HLS) education, chronicling his successful resistance to the pressure to practice corporate law over public-interest law. He describes the debate within the HLS faculty over the Critical Legal Studies movement, essentially a struggle between radical and conservative theorists. But this is also Kahlenberg's own personal story, providing the same inside look at HLS that Scott Turow does in One L (Farrar, 1988. rev. ed.)--the anxieties and boredom of class, the pecularities of professors, and the fixation on grades. Unlike Turow, whose narrative ends with the first year of law school, Kahlenberg writes of his experiences from matriculation to commencement. A required purchase for any library holding One L .
- Elizabeth Fielder Olson, Archer & Greiner, Haddonfield, N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558492348
• ISBN-13: 978-1558492349
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,418,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars He Should Have Dropped Out, July 12, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School (Hardcover)

This book is, well, strange. The author is obviously bright, and possesses at least some degree of self-awareness. Despite this, it seems to have taken him three years to figure out what should have been obvious in three weeks: namely, that he had no desire to study law or to become a lawyer.

This passage (pp. 130, 131) is typical:

"What I did care about - or thought I did - was my third class: Poverty Law.... But if poverty law was the right field to go into, (the professor) never convinced us that it was interesting. He said that poverty lawyers should use arbitrary rules to benefit their clients, exploit the loopholes, because 'the poor do not have resources, all they have are the rules'. But the rules were boring. It was not interesting to know that when a rule says you have ten days to file, you do or do not count the days at both ends. But that was what poverty law entailed: knowing the arcane rules involved in such things as meeting income and the asset requirements of various programs. During a break one day, I heard one student tell another, 'This is as bad as tax'. Maybe we were just painfully naïve, but we still held out the hope that doing good, if not remunerative, could at least be interesting".

Well, law is concerned largely with "arcane rules". What did he expect?

Kahlenberg's solution to his dislike of law school was to opt for as many non-legal elective courses as possible. Most of these were taught at the Kennedy School of Government, which he greatly preferred: "Its purpose - to take on the great social and political problems of our time, involving issues such as health care, foreign relations, and poverty - was so much more grand than that of the law school (which is concerned with) a narrow field more akin to accounting" (p. 173). Yet even the Kennedy School is attacked for being insuccifiently theoretical: "the school's emphasis on mechanics and management over vision is a perenial concern" (pp. 173, 174).

Kahlenberg writes, at considerable length, about the need for Harvard Law graduates to perform "public service": a phrase which he never defines but clearly restricts to working in Washington as a staff member for a powerful Senator or an important Senate committee. He fails to explain why this sort of employment is more relevant or admirable than the private practice of law, of which he writes disparagingly (p.155):

"By the end of the summer, I had come to believe that most high-priced attorneys did not wear white hats or black hats; they wore no hats at all. They just came to work every day to do jobs that were of little social importance".

I would respectfully suggest the following: (1) the vast majority of jobs in this world can be argued to have "little social importance" (which in any case is an obviously subjective description); (2) the writing of speeches for some hack politician, or policy papers that will be read by few and acted upon by none, is a job of less "social importance" than the provision of legal services to private clients.

Although I myself am a lawyer, I freely admit that it's not for everyone. Why did it take Kahlenberg so long to figure out that it was not for him?

It was only at the tail end of his final year, upon deciding not to take the Bar exam or to accept a job with a law firm, that realization set in: "I wondered whether I had gone off the deep end. Being a press secretary had nothing to do with law whatsoever. Had I just wasted three years of my life and a lot of money? Was law school a big mistake?" (p. 223). Yes, Richard, it was.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Point, But Poorly Written, June 15, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Broken Contract (Paperback)

This book has some strong points, but they are outweighed, in my opinion, by the negatives.

First, in terms of subject matter, Kahlenberg's very liberal--despite what he may profess, he seems (to a moderate like me) much more liberal than your average Democrat--slant to absolutely everything about which he writes taints the entire book. Apparently, he seems to think that only liberals can provide useful public service or enhance the nation's government. One might think that, with seven years of formal education, Kahlenberg might realize that things are not so black-and-white, and that people of all ideologies can be (and are) public servants dedicated to helping their fellow citizens.

When it came to the actual structure of the book, I tired of his endless rants on how HLS can change people. Yes, I understand--and can sympathize--with his point, but I prefer not to be absolutely bombarded with a single idea over and over again without so much as a single additional insight after the first 100 pages. Moreover, detailed descriptions of two or three firm interviews were interesting--fascinating, in fact. But having to read what amounted to the same story (with different firms and different attorneys that eventually all blended together) some 20-30 times was tedious at best.

Once again, I get his point that all corporate firms are the same, that they are extremely successful at attracting HLS students away from public work, and that they work against progressive change and the common good rather than helping the public. But there has to be a less mind-numbingly dull and long-winded--not to mention pretentious and arrogant--way to communicate the point.

If you absolutely must read this--as you probably should if you have any intention of going to HLS or any other "name" law school--borrow it from the library, but do not waste your money purchasing the book.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Just pass over this one., January 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School (Paperback)

This book is not only uninteresting, but it also insults the intelligence of the average person. The author finds himself in a situation where he is placed into an environment where his level of intelligence is the norm. He struggles with this identity crises of no longer being an intellectual elite but a commoner. His criticisms of the teaching methodologies are inconsistent within the context of his story. Don't waste your time or money.