Let’s be clear. Progressive lawyers do not make the big money. As the Honorable Stephen J. Fortunato said this weekend at Yale Law School ’s Rebellious Lawyering Conference, “To be a left-wing lawyer is going to cost you fifteen to twenty million dollars.”

It does add up. Join a big law firm after graduation, defend corporations and start with a salary of $125,000 or more. By the time you’re forty, your salary can grow to more or less a million dollars per year. Work for the public defenders office, and that alluring sum shrinks. One day, far in the future, you might make a hundred thousand dollars a year. Maybe. If you’re lucky.

In its twelfth year, the “Reblaw” conference hosted more than 500 students who aspire to this fate. To the student organizers of the conference, in a profession that by definition means working within the system, that decision alone makes these students rebels.