A legal intern asked me a few months ago some version of the question: "how/why do you do direct legal service work when the deck is so stacked against your clients and you can't change that fact? why not do some kind of impact litigation to have a bigger effect?" 1/

At least right now, the answer for me is a bit nihilistic but also very freeing. It's that whether you do direct service or impact litigation, odds are your impact as a single lawyer (or single person, for that matter) is going to be tiny. It's just that the impact... 2/

manifests differently depending on the type of work you do. Doing legal services, individual lawyers can sometimes have profound effects on a relatively small number of peoples' lives. Doing impact litigation, as an... 3/

individual lawyer (especially a very young lawyer!), your effect on an individual case may be very small, and the chances that case leads to some major, impactful change may also be very small. But, when you do strike gold, perhaps the victory benefits a whole lot of people. 4/

Both paths seem fine! (Although there are all sorts of institutional pressures in both fields that are problematic-a question for another thread.)

The key is to accept that you're just one person. And your impact is necessarily going to be small in the grand scheme of things. 5/

Who can possibly know how the scales will even out over the course of a career? Whether you "did more good" or "changed more" in one field than you would have in another? It just doesn't seem like a productive question to me. 6/

The better question is: Can I do my current work with sufficient dedication, skill, and compassion, so that I'm genuinely contributing toward better outcomes--even if that contribution will necessarily be small and uncertain.

For some, that question will send them to.. 7/

an appellate defender job where they write all day, because that's what gives them energy. Others will find their calling in impact lit. Others will be driven to civil legal aid or trial level public defense.

And people can (and should, I think!) cycle.. 8/

among them, as one type of work becomes draining, and another appears exciting.

But these are fundamentally different questions from asking: "How can I, as an individual, change the world the most?" Although law schools tell us to ask that question, I'm not convinced it has.. 9/

any clear answers, it can easily become pretty hubristic, and focus on it can distract us from the questions that do matter.