Law Students Expect Corporate Futures

Although very few first-year law students want to go into corporate law work, more than a third of them expect to do so, according to the results of a survey released yesterday by the Harvard Law Students Guild.

Nearly 91 per cent of the first-year students who responded to the questionnaire said they would like to work in something other than a large law firm, preferring public service or political work to corporate law, James R. Kirk, a first-year law student who conducted the survey for the student group, said yesterday.

However, 38 per cent of the respondents said they expect they will in fact join law firms that work mainly with business and tax law when they graduate, Kirk said.

Forty per cent of the class responded to the questionnaire.

Alfred Daniels, dean of placement of the Law School, said yesterday that students do seem to move toward corporate firms while at the Law School, undergoing what he called "a socializing process."

There are more jobs available to recent law school graduates in corporate work than in public service areas, Daniels added.

About 62 per cent of the Law School Class of '75 joined law firms immediately after graduation, but that number may increase when other members of the class finish short-term appointments as judges' clerks.

Albert M. Sacks, dean of the Law School, said yesterday he has not yet seen the survey's results, but he said he does not believe students find that the Law School "pushes them one way or the other."

"I think they find their education prepares them for whatever they want to do in the future," Sacks said.