Public Interest 101 : Using the Law School Curriculum to Quell Public Interest Drift and Expand Students' Public Interest Commitment

In an attempt to explore how the law school environment might be purposefully used to support students' public interest commitment, we sought to examine whether participation in non-traditional, public service-oriented law school programs can affect students' future career plans. In particular, we selected a program -- the Marshall-Brennan Project at American University, Washington College of Law -- housed as part of an official law school curriculum rather than as an extracurricular club or internship program. By selecting this type of program, we are able to study an activity that addresses two critical factors related to drift by: (1) providing an alternative class to the traditional law school curriculum (which appears to exacerbate drift) and (2) offering subcultural support to students with public interest aspirations. Understanding the effects of such a program on public interest drift can provide support for adopting this curriculum more widely as part of a policy to promote public interest lawyers. Given the literature and the program we selected, our research questions focus on the effect participation in this program has on students' short- and long-term career goals as well as the effects on students' views of their abilities as lawyers and views of law school. Part I of this Article briefly examines the relevant literature on non-traditional legal education and public interest drift, with particular attention paid to identifying the factors that may aggravate drift as well as the factors or influences that may serve to quell drift. Part II describes the specific program we studied, details our research methodology, and summarizes our results. Part III first discusses the results of our research, which finds support for the hypothesis that participation in the Marshall-Brennan Project may serve to quell drift due to its effect on law students' confidence levels and its provision of subcultural support. Part III then briefly discusses the ways in which law schools can maintain, or even bolster, students' commitment to this public interest work