Great idea although the law firms won’t think so.
Vox Reports
A group of Harvard Law School students on Wednesday shouted down speakers and stalled a campus recruitment dinner hosted by a major law firm that represents fossil fuel interests in climate change lawsuits.
Holding a banner reading “Drop Exxon,” more than two dozen students in blazers and ties chanted, “We won’t work for you if you work for them,” at recruiters from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, a law firm that employs more than 1,000 attorneys around the world.
“We have just a few years left to address the climate crisis. That means stopping corporate polluters from continuing to block climate action and evading accountability for their malfeasance,” said first-year law student Aaron Regunberg, amplified with a human microphone. “And what is the most critical tool these corporations use to get away with climate murder? It’s this right here.”
Law school recruitment dinners like these are usually high-end, low-key, genteel affairs, according to students. The venue for the Paul Weiss dinner was the Catalyst Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, replete with an open bar, whole lobsters, and an ice sculpture, and more than 100 students were in attendance.
So a raucous protest like this served as a jarring new tactic to pressure greenhouse gas emitters: targeting the white-collar workers that protect them.
Paul Weiss has a reputation for siding with progressive causes. The firm helped reverse “separate but equal” in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case and paved the way for same-sex marriage by representing Edith Windsor in her challenge of the Defense of Marriage Act. In the 2018 election cycle, more than 93 percent of Paul Weiss donations went to Democrats.
Read more at https://www.vox.com/2020/1/16/21067763/harvard-law-climate-protest-exxon-paul-weiss
