The Effect of Social Reform Organizations on the Subsequent Careers of Participants: A Follow-Up Study of Early Participants in the OEO Legal Services Program
The Effect of Social Reform Organizations on the Subsequent Careers of Participants: A Follow-Up Study of Early Participants in the OEO Legal Services Program
University of Wisconsin-Madison: Institute for Research on Poverty (1976)
Abstract
The effects of participation as a salaried professional in a reform oriented organization on the participants' subsequent career is considered in this paper and studied in the context of the OEO sponsored Legal Services Program. Because of the paucity of literature on the consequences of participation in reform organizations, a related literature, that of the consequences of participation in the student movement of the sixties, is drawn on for insight and is also critically examined. A comparison of the subsequent careers of 228 lawyers involved in the program in 1967 to those of 981 other lawyers who were practicing law in 1967 indicates that program participation has an important effect on both the distribution of professional services and the rendering of reform oriented free or reduced fee work. The explanations offered stress the importance of job market factors, in contrast to previous work which has suggested that the socialization is the sole or primary means through which such effects occur. A further difference from previous work is the consideration of the effects of variation in experience in the organization-a topic which is briefly discussed.
