Ralph Nader doesn’t command as much attention as he used to. Lingering acrimony over his role in the 2000 election that Al Gore lost to George W. Bush by a narrow 5-4 margin has pushed Nader off the pedestal he once held among the liberal intelligentsia. Which is a shame, because regardless of the wisdom of his 2000 campaign, his work exposing corporate abuse and the role of the government in covering it up — most famously in 1965’s Unsafe At Any Speed — shouldn’t be wholly relegated to the dustbin of history over his political aspirations.

In any event, Nader spoke at Harvard Law School yesterday to share his thoughts (UPDATE: he spoke in conjunction with this report by Pete Davis on the school’s public interest mission) as a Harvard Law School alum on the current state of legal academia and… he’s not terribly impressed:

Nader, a Harvard Law graduate, drew a grim picture of the American legal system, saying that Harvard churns out “lucrative cogs in the corporate wheel.” He referenced student debt, hidden bank fees, and unintelligible contracts that consumers don’t read as examples of injustice in the legal system. “The curriculum is built around corporate law, and corporate power, and corporate perpetration, and corporate defense,” Nader said.

It’s probably fair to say there’s a chicken and egg conundrum here, since the law school curriculum is just a reflection of the legal system that thinks corporations are people — and not just in the legal fiction kind of way — and works to expand their rights every day. We’re on the cusp of the Supreme Court announcing that corporations can use their asymmetric bargaining power to fully opt out of the justice system. You can’t pin that on the law schools.

But Nader hits on the real crux of the problem when he mentions student debt. While he was criticizing student debt abuses broadly, it’s the debt within the legal space that does the most work pushing students into the corporate machine. Plenty of law students enter law school with service in their hearts until Sallie Mae kicks their teeth in. Insert a shiny pair of golden handcuffs courtesy of Biglaw and the 1L to corporate cog pipeline is complete.

For his part, Harvard dean John Manning defends his school’s public service commitment:

In an interview, Dean of the Law School John F. Manning ’82 said the Law School actively promotes public interest careers, adding that students in the class of 2017 spent an average of 586 hours working pro bono. “Harvard Law School is very supportive of public interest,” Manning said. “From the very outset we have a very large, energetic office of public advising, we have a program on law and social change that really helps people identify and think about careers that try to affect social change.”

Except that doesn’t really answer Nader’s broader critique. Yes, the richest school in the universe funds a number of warm and fuzzy opportunities for students before handing them a bill and wishing them well at Cravath. Not only do these opportunities dry up the further down the endowment chain you go, they at best offer a public service tourism for well-meaning students who will garner just enough experience to genuinely help people right as they’re walking out the door.

Obviously there are public service fellowships and repayment programs that offer real chances to work in the public sector… but those are drops in the bucket compared to the access to justice needs.

Nader appealed for students to take it upon themselves to help:

“You’re in the top one percent,” Nader said. “What are you going to do with it?”

Well… they won’t be the top one percent once they start working in the public interest. Unless of course they’re independently wealthy and at a certain point depending on the altruism of the rich is a wretchedly inefficient solution. For the rank-and-file law students, unfortunately, the top one percent doesn’t have much on the top one-tenth of one percent and that’s who holds all their debt until someone can reform that process.

I’m not holding my breath with all these corporate cogs running around though.

UPDATE: Check out the talk below:

Nader Criticizes Law School’s Excessively ‘Corporate’ Focus [Harvard Crimson]

Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.