Here's an EA forum post on the second (Harvard Law) article: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/8f/lawyering_to_give/

Although well-intentioned, I think the Harvard Law article is dangerous. The legal community is potentially pretty low-hanging fruit for EA recruitment: it contains a lot of people who make a lot of money and who generally make misguided but well-intentioned charitable decisions, both regarding how to donate their money and how to use their talents.

Changing the culture of this community will be complicated, however. Early missteps could be extremely costly to the extent they give the community the wrong initial perception of EA-style thinking. In short, the stakes are high, and although I commend those who want to try to make inroads into the community, I suggest treading cautiously.

Eric, I really like the article you wrote. It's to the point while still being clever and enjoyable to read. I think that sort of writing represents the EA community in the best light. What has been the response within the HBS community? How is your student group going?

I think Bill has the same goal, but maybe the execution didn't work out as well. I am not as familiar with the law culture as I am the business culture, but it seems like there was a bit more "down talking" in his article, intended or not, and that may have ruffled some feathers. I'm not sure that is an entirely bad thing, as there is some part of the EA message that is inherently challenging to many people. There is certainly a way to present it -- as you did in your first article -- that presents the reader with an opportunity to change the world rather than an indictment of their shortcomings.

Edit to add: I think Owen Cotton-Barratt's paper recently posted on this forum (http://effective-altruism.com/ea/is/how_valuable_is_movement_growth/) makes a very relevant point:

Increasing awareness of the movement is important, but increasing positive inclination is at least comparably important. Therefore we should generally: o prefer advocacy to publicity;

o strive to take acts which are seen as good by societal standards as well as for the movement;

o avoid hostility or needless controversy.

I agree with his sentiments, and I think it is very important for young movements such as EA to present ideas in as positive a light as possible, which is very easy for EA to do considering that our goal is to essentially do as much good as possible.

Hi Eric, thanks for writing these and pointing us to them. I think this is a great idea. I just posted these on our business society and law society Facebook page to test the waters and see what response we'd get from a similar input. Out of interest, what has the response been that you've gotten so far?

As everyone who has posted so far has mentioned Bill's article in the Harvard Law Record, I just wanted to respond in this one comment.

His article is definitely fiery, and probably overstates the case for earning-to-give. When Bill and I gave a presentation at the law school last semester, we included advice on how public interest/government lawyers can maximize impact by choosing high-priority causes and gaining leverage by changing policy.

There are a few comments on his article that were positive. I think people who already wanted to go into BigLaw were more receptive to it than those who already wanted to go into public interest/government.

Bill and the other members of HLS EA have accomplished a lot over the past semester -- they've gotten around 40 people to sign the 2L Pledge ( https://www.facebook.com/events/1388997771424219/ ), over 5% of the 2L class. It's a pledge to donate 1% of summer internship earnings to highly effective charities, which they hope to grow and turn into a post-graduation pledge next year.