<p>“You do realize that, in this economy, no one is really voluntarily leaving their firm, right?”</p>
<p>The market for attorneys with even 5 years experience is not nearly as bad as the market for recent grads. I know several people that have made lateral transfers in the last year or so.</p>
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<p>Still, this does not equate to the 40% level of attrition that was mentioned earlier. The fact that law firms can no longer rely on such a high level of attrition means they have to make cuts in initial hires, or increase layoffs. We’re seeing a combination of both in this economy.</p>
<p>Fair enough.</p>
<p>“Most lawyers are social ■■■■■■■, so that each and every lawyer isn’t a salesman is no surprise.”</p>
<p>Heh. I’m alright with lawyer-bashing, but I thought the joke was that we’re all smarmily charismatic?</p>
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<p>Two words – you’re wrong.</p>
<p>Sally’s post made me laff.</p>
<p>Gee, I wonder - if I just QUIT my job, would I get into any sorts of financial troubles? And if do, would I get to blame Harvard for that?</p>
<p>Debt has nothing to do with the problems of the author of that article. He had a paying job, he could have paid his loans. He just chose not to. Why blame law school after that?</p>
<p>There may be problems with legal profession - high indebtedness, insufficient job supply, etc, but that has nothing to do with what was written in the article.</p>
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<p>I would say it depends on what job you have and what your financial picture is. If you are a salesman at Honest Bob’s Used Cars, and one day you tell Honest Bob to go f*** himself, it’s much less likely to be a financial disaster. Because (1) you don’t have to go into debt to get a job as a car salesman; and (2) there normally are plenty of other jobs available in that pay range for which you are qualified.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you sink $150k into a law degree, your options are much more limited. You MUST have a high income (in order to pay your debt) and being a BIGLAW attorney is pretty much the only high income job for which you are qualified.</p>
<p>i really think that the points that prospective law students should take from the article that started this thread isn’t that the author is deserving of our sympathies, but rather that:</p>
<p>1) law school is really really expensive and you can end up with an awful lot of debt if you have to borrow to pay for it.</p>
<p>2) the resulting debt that you could end up with is very very serious and can significantly impact your life for MANY years after law school in that:
a) a job at biglaw may the only way to afford such debt and such jobs are (i) not as easy to get as they used to be even from a top law school, (ii) not always easy to keep giving the way biglaw firms operate especially for the number of years it can take to make a serious dent in your debt, and (iii) not always a place you’d want to stay for many years even if the law firm gives you that option.
b) even with a biglaw job, the burden of your debt may prevent you from enjoying the type of lifestyle you’ve dreamed of when you’ve heard about the ridiculously high salaries biglaw firms pay.
c) unless you want to end up in the position of the author of that article, your choices about career/job changes could be significantly limited for a long time.</p>
<p>3) it may therefore be worth considering lower ranked law schools where you can get significant merit aid – you need to weigh the benefits of coming out with little or no debt vs. the increased difficulty in getting a biglaw job (if that is your goal) or in fact any law job depending on how low in the ranking you have to go to get that merit aid.</p>
<p>BOTTOM LINE – you should not assume that taking on such debt is no big deal because you will get and keep a biglaw job that will make paying off the debt “easy.” such an assumption assumes too much about a) your ability to get a biglaw job in the first place, b) your ability to keep a biglaw job, c) your willingness to stick it out in biglaw for however long it takes to pay off the debt – you just can’t understand what biglaw is going to be like until you are there at which point the debt may make it too late to decide you are only going to stay there for a “couple of years,” and d) your willingness to maintain a lifestyle that is handcuffed by your monthly loan payments – ramen noodles get old fast – the way you’ve happily lived as a student just isn’t going to seem fun anymore several years out of school.</p>
<p>very well said Unbelievablem.<br>
If you are reading TLS (and conversations in my household) there is much more serious discussion about taking scholarships from lower ranked schools. More disturbing in TLS discussions-- students are seriously considering dropping out after a semester or two of law school as they fear they will not get the biglaw job and will be deeply in debt.</p>
<p>There are also lower cost law schools which may keeps one’s debt level down. May not work if your intent is Biglaw, but may be perfectly fine if you are interests lie in public service/govt etc.<br>
In NYS, those schools would include CUNY School of Law and SUNY Buffalo. I believe the tuition is around $15,000-20,000.</p>
<p>marny - often public sector and government jobs are sited as alternatives to biglaw – these jobs pay a LOT less than biglaw jobs and may be easier to get than biglaw, but that doesn’t mean that they are “easy” to get. many public sector and government jobs can be extremely competitive to get – and some require prior work experience. </p>
<p>any prospective law student should ask a lot of questions about job placement at any school they are considering.</p>
<p>in this day and age- no job is easy to get. And I am sure all government jobs, even entry level are extremely hard to come by with all the cuts in state budgets.<br>
(D # 2 who is graduating this May signed up for the NYS Court Officer exam. There were 60,000 applicants statewide who signed up for the test. So government jobs on all levels are pretty hard to get.)</p>
<p>But I think it will be much easier and less stressful to deal with un/underemployment when one has little debt vs $150,000 debt.<br>
The idea of a 27 year old who is just starting their adult life, with large debt and little chance of obtaining employment to pay off the loan is just downright scary. </p>
<p>Due to all this doom and gloom talk about debt and law school my kid is still not 100% certain that she is going to pursue this venture–
But I will say that the guaranteed scholarship offer did bring a smile to her face!!
And honestly- I just don’t see that much of a down side. She works for a union. Probably will continue to work for a union or be involved with workers rights and doesn’t want to go the BigLaw route.
If she can get her law degree without the debt, it will give her alot more flexibility in finding employment that meets her needs- and she won’t be saddled with crippling debt and feel it necessary to go the biglaw route to pay back the loan. </p>
<p>anyway- she is still weighing her options. She hasn’t heard from a bunch of schools yet, but I think that may change over the next 2 to 3 weeks.</p>
<p>I hope everyone should have such problems:
T-14 acceptances vs a full ride. I know- we’re very luck to have these choices.</p>
<p>Or maybe just forego law school and medical school and work for starbucks and write the screeplay.</p>
<p>marny - you are not only very lucky that your d has wonderful options but also that she seems to be realistically weighing those various options. best of luck to her!</p>
<p>Oops - hope my last post isn’t interpreted as commentary on Marny’s daughter’s prospects. They are clearly wonderful. I’m just looking at this as a parent of a current college junior and wondering about future pathways for him. Congratulations to Marny and her daughter.</p>
<p>I know T14 schools don’t seem to offer the same job opportunities that they used to, but the fact remains that the gap in opportunities between T14 and non-T14 is still huge, and it’s not something I’d sacrifice for less debt. </p>
<p>Within the T14, the gaps become more trivial, though pedants will be quick to emphasize slightly better placement statistics at higher-ranked schools. And while I do think that certain really prestigious firms dig lower in the class at Columbia than they do at Georgetown, I strongly doubt that anyone has a coherently formed and intelligible desire to work at those specific firms. But if one wants to work in Biglaw, one goes to a T14; if one wants a good government position, one goes to a T14; if one wants a good public interest position, one goes to a T14. I don’t think, even in this economy, there’s a question that the T14 name still gives you a leg-up for competitive employment opportunities, as high or low-paying as they may be.</p>
<p>(looks up what pedants means)</p>
<p>Hm. “One who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge.” I guess that’s my word of the day.</p>
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<p>It seems to me the question is “how much debt”</p>
<p>If it’s 50k in debt, I would agree with you 100%. If it’s 200k in debt, I would not. At a certain point, it’s just not worth it anymore. For each person, the line is different. But I think that for most people, the cost of attending a T-14 school isn’t worth it any more.</p>
<p>JMHO.</p>
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<p>–All of this info is from my brother, who goes to Duke LS.</p>
<p>I didn’t even really write the info. He just sent me an angry e-mail, and I kept the funniest parts and edited it according to what I know.</p>
<p>And I’m actually barely 18*.</p>
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<p>But we’re not talking about most law schools. We’re talking about Harvard Law School - the law school of the topic of the original post of this thread, and which has one of the most generous LRAP/LIPP programs in the country. The program covers any sort of low-paying law job, including low-paying private sector work and even self-employment (i.e. launching your own practice). </p>
<p>[Low</a> Income Protection Plan (LIPP)](<a href=“http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/index.html]Low”>http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/index.html)</p>
<p>Through the Harvard Law School LRAP, any lawyer making less than $42k a year pays nothing towards his student loans whatsoever. Not a single dime. All payments are handled by Harvard until such time as the subject begins to make more than $42k a year or until the debt is retired. </p>
<p>[Participant</a> Contribution Formula and Income Scale](<a href=“http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/participant-contributions/scale.html]Participant”>http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/participant-contributions/scale.html)</p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t think it’s that hard to find a relatively cushy law job that pays only $40k a year. Surely many mediocre law firms would love to hire a Harvard Law School grad, even if only on a de-facto part-time basis, for just $40k a year. For example, the job might be ‘technically’ full-time for the purposes of LRAP, but with a verbal arrangement that provides for 2-3 months of vacation or leave - perhaps unpaid - every year. Or, you could simply launch your own practice. At a cut-rate price of $50/hour, you would only have to bill 800 hours in the whole year (plus let’s assume that you need to make an additional $20k/year to cover your overhead, or another 400 billing hours) to make $40k of profit in your practice, which is only ~30 weeks worth of work, leaving the entire rest of the year for you to do whatever the heck you want. {Note, this is not dissimilar to people I know who have IT skills in Cisco, Oracle, SAP, and the like who work as independent contractors billing $75-100/hr and only work maybe 25-35 weeks a year, leaving the rest of the year to do whatever they want.} I suspect that any reasonably entrepreneurial Harvard Law School grad could generate plenty of business if they’re charging only $50 an hour. Heck, even a plumber or an auto mechanic costs more than $50 an hour. </p>
<p>Granted, $40k is not a lot of money. But it’s not bad either, especially for somebody in their 20’s fresh out of law school: certainly far better than a life of eating ramen. For example, I can think of many PhD students who are living on stipends far smaller than $40k a year, and while their lifestyle is clearly far from luxurious - nobody has a new car (or often times, no car at all), everybody lives in cheap housing with roommates, their lifestyle is still far from penurious. For example, I can think of quite a few grad students who spent last summer vacationing in Europe, in some cases, for several months. I can think of one guy who has been vacationing in Australia over the winter break for more than a month now. Granted, these were cheap and rough vacations: backpacking, sleeping in hostels or crashing in the apartments of their friends, using cheap transport such as Eurail or RyanAir, living off of cheap food from street vendors or markets rather than luxury restaurants, and other such cost-cutting tactics. But hey, for people in their 20’s or early 30’s, it’s not bad, especially if you only have to work part-time. I sure wouldn’t mind having a job making only $40 a year in return for having time to backpack in Europe or Australia for months on end. </p>
<p>I also suspect that the system could also be easily gamed, and probably is. For example, I know one guy who went to law school (but unfortunately not Harvard or Yale) who knew full well that afterwards he was simply going to work for his father, who owns a large real-estate practice and could use in-house counsel to oversee title deeds and mortgage documents. He also knew that he would eventually inherit that company once his father retired. If he had gone to Harvard Law, then surely he could have arranged for his father to pay him “only” $42k a year for the next 10-15 years that correspond to the full LRAP repayment schedule until his loans were retired and then, immediately the day afterwards, start paying him what he’s really worth, or hand him ownership of the company at that point. Seems to me that, according to the Harvard LRAP rules, such a maneuver would be perfectly acceptable. </p>
<p>Yale Law’s LRAP program is even more generous, with a $60k income threshold before you have to start paying in. Again, if you’re a Yale Law graduate, surely you can find a full-time law position at a mediocre law firm, or even start your own practice, that makes less than $60k a year and provides you with plenty of leisure time. Even an officially part-time law position (as opposed to a technically full-time position that is de-facto part-time) might still be quite workable. For example, consider an officially half-time position at a mediocre law firm that pays only $30k a year, which Yale would impute to be equivalent to a $60k a year full-time position, and hence would be fully eligible for the entire LRAP payout. I know quite a few people who wouldn’t mind making only $30k a year in return for only having to be in the office half the time. Heck, as far as I can tell, the job you take doesn’t even have to be related to the practice of law. </p>
<p>Eligibility is based upon the graduate’s income and debt level, not the type of employment.</p>
<p>[Yale</a> Law School](<a href=“http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/COAP.htm]Yale”>http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/COAP.htm)</p>
<p>The bottom line is, if you’re an aspiring lawyer who’s afraid of law school debt, then one legitimate strategy is to choose Yale or Harvard Law School, knowing that you can fall back onto their highly generous LRAP programs. All recent economic troubles notwithstanding, I find it hard to believe that Yale or Harvard Law School grads truly can’t find unstressful jobs that pay them $40-60k a year and provide them with plenty of leisure time with which to pursue other interests. Let’s be honest: there are boatloads of mediocre no-name law firms who could never dream of hiring anybody of the caliber of a Harvard or Yale Law graduate. Surely you could find a job with one of them, especially if you’re willing to take such a cutrate salary.</p>
<p>As a middle class kid in a suburb of KC, this whole thread has a “coast” bias.</p>
<p>I wake up at 6AM, go to school until 3pm, practice until 5pm, and then have work until 9pm.</p>
<p>So that’s what, roughly a little less than 70 hours a week as a high school student. Oh no, you have to work 70-80 hours to make 160k a year. :*(</p>