Law School Gets $1M For Public Service

The Law School will set up a new $1 million endowment designed to relieve the financial burden of its graduates who choose to enter public interest law, officials said yesterday.

The program, funded by a grant from media magnate Walter Annenberg, is named for federal judge Irving R. Kaufman, a longtime U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge famed for his defense of First Amendment rights.

The $10,000 stipends will serve as salary subsidies for Law School graduates who enter low-paying careers in the public sector. Law School Dean Robert C. Clark said that while the exact details of the fund had yet to be worked out, the money for the academic year 1990-'91 will likely be used to supplement alumni income for up to three years.

"We are grateful for the opportunity this gift provides to encourage able young lawyers to enter fields of practice which have a value to society far in excess of the remuneration they provide," President Derek C. Bok said in a prepared statement yesterday.

The Law School also provides the Low Income Protection Plan (LIPP) for graduates entering low-paying jobs. That program forgives or significantly reduces the debts of alumni in the public interest sector.

Coming on the heels of a month-long controversy over Clark's support for public interest law, faculty members said yesterday the new Kaufman fellowships gave an indication that the new dean's priorities lie with creating financial incentives to enter non-traditional legal careers.

"I'm hopeful that this will be more representative of the future direction of Bob Clark's deanship than the more symbolic actions he's taken so far," said Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence A. Tribe.

Clark has drawn fire from students and faculty for his decision this summer to eliminate the school's public interest placement office in an effort to cut costs. Despite his promise to transfer the office's responsibilities to a general placement office, 1055 law students have signed a petition demanding that Clark restore the full-time public interest counselors.

But Clark said yesterday that the new program is completely separate from his decision about the counseling program. "I started to arrange this the day before I became dean this summer," said Clark, "The student services office was another project."

The Kaufman fellowships, Clark said, represent a chance "to actually make a difference" with financial help to graduates who enter public interest law.

Annenberg, who has donated large sums to many other universities including a $20million grant to set up the Annenberg School ofCommunications at the University of Pennsylvania,earmarked his donation specifically to commemoratehis 40-year friendship with Kaufman.

Kaufman achieved notoriety after his 1951decision sentencing Ethel and Julius Rosenberg todeath for allegedly providing the Soviet Unionwith classified information. But speculationcontinues that some of the evidence in the trialwas obtained illegally by the Federal Bureau ofInvestigation.

In addition to the controversial espionagecase, Kaufman has made a name for himself on thefederal bench as an eloquent and consistentdefender of free speech and defendant rights.

"As a judge on the Court of Appeals he wrote anumber of very important and influential opinionson the First Amendment," said Tribe, a notedconstitutional law scholar.

But Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz wasmore critical of Kaufman's judicial career.

"He started on a very questionable note [withthe Rosenberg trial]," said Dershowitz. "But overthe last 25 years he's had a distinguished career.He's an absolute saint compared to some of thepeople Harvard has named things after.