Hobkirk, Kephart and Melendez are all law students with a deep commitment to public service work. And they have plenty of company among area law students.
After a decade in which relatively few law students appeared to be interested in working with the poor, there has been a quiet rebirth of interest among law students in public service work, spurred in part by law schools requiring students to do such work.
"In general, I see a resurgence on the part of law students to do public interest work," said Judith Bernstein-Baker, director of the Public Service Program at University of Pennsylvania Law School. "My sense is that the 1980s was a period of excess and greed and people realized it also was a period of tremendous job dissatisfaction among attorneys."
John Hyson, a professor at Villanova University School of Law for more than 20 years, agreed that the pendulum is beginning to swing back toward public service.
"I teach environmental law and it seems to me that in the 1980s, students were interested in going to work for the big corporations - telling them how to comply or avoid complying with environmental law," Hyson said. "Now, most want to work for government agencies and be on the side of what they see are good guys."
People who regularly work with the poor said they, too, were beginning to notice a modest resurgence.
"I think there is a renewed interest in working on problems of low-income people and more of a commitment to pro bono work," said Margaret Lenzi, an attorney with Delaware County Legal Assistance.
And Harvey Strauss, executive director of Montgomery County Legal Aid Service, said that while interest in public service work among law students was "not anywhere close to 15 or 20 years ago," it is "significantly better than five, six, or seven years ago."
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