Start Counting Down to "Countdown 2000"

Public service has always been an important part of law student life. Now the Law Student Division is going to show the world how much we law students do.

The division's Board of Governors has approved "Countdown 2000," an effort to count the number of public service hours law students put in nationwide. The goal is to reach 200,000 hours by the end of the school year in May 2000.

The Public Interest Committee of the division's Board of Governors is coordinating the effort. Committee Chair and Eighth Circuit Governor Timothy Tuttle (timtuttle@abanet.org), a student at the Unviersity of Nebraska College of Law, says that any unpaid work that a law student does in the public interest counts. So the public service project your school did on Work-A-Day last fall counts, as does organizing the "Race Judicata" in your town, as does any legal work you do for a law school clinic. If your law school has a pro bono requirement for graduation, that counts, too.

"The goal is to demonstrate that public interest has always been, and will continue to be, an important part of being a lawyer," Tuttle says. "We want to show people that lawyers and law students aren't just cold-hearted, money-grubbing people; they really do care about their communities." Countdown 2000 will count not only the work of Law Student Division members; it will count the public interest work of all law students.

Here's how it works. Your ABA school representative has been asked to canvass your law school's various organizations and add up the number of hours of public service work their members are doing. He or she will then fill out a one-page form and send it to Law Student Division headquarters in Chicago, where the total number of public service hours will be tallied.

Your ABA school representative should have received a copy of the form in the mail or at one of the circuit roundtables that was held last fall. If you need a copy of the form, contact your circuit governor (see box on page 77) or the division's office in Chicago at 312/988-5624. Or check out the division's Web site at www.abanet.org/lsd.

Lee Farbman
Lee Farbman, a third-year student at Northwestern University School of Law, is Student Law-yer's student editor.