Students Support Adding a Public Service Graduation Requirement

Colorado Law School students voted overwhelmingly this month in support of a public service requirement for graduation from the law school. Of the students that responded to a poll on the topic, 64% believe that public service should be part of the law school experience, and 59% believe that the service should be a mandatory graduation requirement.

In early February, student leaders and the Public Interest Task Force distributed an on-line poll to all current Colorado Law students. The poll followed two public meetings held by the Task Force to describe its proposal for a public service graduation requirement. More than 50% of the student body responded to the poll, which asked whether the students supported a public service requirement, whether it should be mandatory, whether 30 hours over the course of law school was an appropriate target number, whether clinical work should count toward the requirement and whether completion of the requirement should be reflected on student transcripts.

The Task Force recommended that Colorado Law adopt a public service requirement after the Task Force – composed of students, administrators and faculty members – spent a year studying trends in other law schools, arguments for and against a requirement, and different forms of public service programming. The model recommended by the Task Force mirrors one that has been successfully adopted at Harvard, the University of Washington, and the University of Denver law schools. It would require students to complete 30 hours of law-related public service work during their second and third years of law school. The proposal is now being considered by a faculty committee, and is likely to be considered by the full faculty in the next year.

The broad student support for the idea of a public service requirement as an element of the curriculum at Colorado Law reflects trends around the nation. Many law schools have focused greater curricular and extracurricular attention on the public service obligations of members of the legal profession, spurred in part by student demand and in part by the urging of members of the Bar, who are themselves increasingly aware of the role pro bono work should play in a legal career.

For more information, contact chair of the Public Interest Task Force, Professor Melissa Hart.