We should all be taking a more critical approach to the 2L recruit and ask ourselves if we are getting what we really want from it
I chose to approach the 2L recruit with a healthy dose of skepticism. I know my political values and I know that most legal careers don’t offer me the kind of work that I care about. Most won’t involve advocating for the little guy, because our legal system remains deeply inaccessible and inequitable. Racialized and low-income people are not only unable to afford representation: they are often targeted by the state and clients with the means to assemble armies of lawyers on their side. If we believe that a fair process is necessary to produce a fair result, then the problem is easy to spot (and you don’t have to be Chief Justice Wagner to realize this). As long as inequality persists in our society, injustice does too, because our legal system distorts itself to serve the interests of the wealthy to the exclusion of everyone else. The game gets stacked against the average person.
So what about people like me? What about people who came to law school with the goal of helping vulnerable people through challenging times? If that sounds like you, opting out of the 2L recruit is the only choice that makes sense.
It’s easy to sympathize with the perspective of someone who says, ‘look, the 2L recruit is an easy path to a comfortable life. If I can secure a Bay Street job, I’m set.’ It’s easy to understand that thought process when tuition only seems to go up, when the cost of living in Toronto is doing the same, when the culture at the school seems to revolve around preparing us for Big Law, and when, ultimately, the salaries of a corporate law career are a powerful incentive on its own. Those are certainly problems that we should care to address—collectively, as members of a broader public.
But none of those reasons touch on the motivation I described earlier, common to many of us who chose the path of law school. The feeling of wanting to fight for the little guy is also easy to sympathize with because I believe the feeling tells us what we know to be obvious: that a legal career can never simply be a means to an end. To practice law is to make a political statement, to profess your ethical values, and to pledge your allegiance to a cause.
Ultimately, and unfortunately, the 2L recruit is not designed for those whose cause is social justice. The clientele and case catalogs of the most prestigious corporate offices speak for themselves; and you won’t hear them amplifying the voices of society’s marginalized. At best, these firms might carve out time for pro bono work amid their bread-and-butter of mergers and acquisitions for multinational conglomerates. At worst, the summer position you secured in the recruit might involve actively using the skills you learned to bend the law against the everyday people who live in your community. The tenant who fears eviction with nowhere else to go, the service worker abused and exploited by their boss, or the newcomer family trying to build a life in this country but about to be torn apart by deportation: who fights for them, and the millions of other decent, regular people, if those in our position don’t choose to?
To say that 2L recruit opportunities with legal aid, public interest, and non-profit organizations are scarce is an understatement; many simply aren’t posted during the main recruit period at all. That doesn’t mean these positions don’t exist. Plenty of options open up as the year progresses, and even more are available once articling rolls around. But it does create the illusion that corporate careers are the only option, so inevitably, over the summer before 2L starts, people will devote significant time and energy into making themselves the perfect candidate for those careers. And they will do so despite a nagging feeling that the jobs they are moving heaven and earth to secure—the countless hours editing cover letters, sending applications, preparing for OCIs, and doing mock interviews, then doing real interviews, attending dinners, using first-choice language, performing perfection as a candidate, and on and on—won’t ever let them fight for the people in their communities.
While the 2L recruit process is a powerful force, designed to move you through that conveyor belt, it’s worth taking a step back and thinking about what really does move us. When I did this, and thought about what I wanted my legal career to look like, it moved me out of applying in the 2L recruit. Well, almost. I applied to about ten positions, but it was easy to select them because so many of the options simply did not resonate with the reason I wanted to be a lawyer: to advocate for the underrepresented. Rather than mass-apply with a generic cover letter and treat the recruit as a numbers game, I spent more time on fewer applications. I can focus my attention on the offers I got, and I know even more opportunities will open up later.
To be clear, I am hopeful that one day the 2L recruit will be better-suited to people interested in public interest careers. Abstaining, alone, is not the goal, and we should all demand more from our school administration in terms of serving students who, surely, can’t all be expected to want a job on Bay Street. But for now, it’s enough to just devote more time to reflecting on why we are here and what the nature of a legal career is, because whatever it is, it isn’t an apolitical job path.
If your path to law school grew—even partially—from the belief that our legal system could be a tool to help people, then you don’t just owe it to others to be a more conscientious law student. You owe it to yourself to be more skeptical about the path the 2L recruit represents, and to think more critically about what the opportunity to practice law truly offers you.
Editor’s Note: Jonathan Ku is a steering committee member of the University of Toronto Law Union.