<p>I did not once use the term, “prestigious,” in my post. I used the term, “selective.” The implicit conclusion I was hoping you to draw is that it isn’t too difficult to get a firm like Skadden from Georgetown, or at least it wasn’t in the good ol’ days. A student, thus, isn’t necessarily being relegated to non-Skadden life (oh what a terrible life that would be!) by choosing Georgetown.</p>
<p>Fish and Richardson just isn’t doing well, and that’s a fact. The no-offered everyone last summer, and that’s just one of the majorly terrible things they’ve been doing to associates.</p>
<p>A far more efficacious example would have been deciding between Davis Polk and, say, Milbank as a function of choosing between Georgetown and a higher ranked school. However, there can be valid reasons for wanting to work at the former.</p>
<p>I’m sure you followed my point, whether or not the examples were well chosen. In case it wasn’t obvious, I don’t see much personal gain in following the fortunes of national firms, so I don’t bother. </p>
<p>That being said, Skadden is plenty “selective” in the eyes the vast majority of people deciding which law program to attend (and certainly more so than Fish). I don’t just choose my examples to reflect your particular situation, but to debate the advantages and disadvantages in choosing School T(x) or School T(x + 10) with a good scholarship. Since the relative merit of firms is always to some extent in the eye of the beholder, you (or someone else) will always be able pick on the concrete examples. </p>
<p>When people start to seriously float the idea of delaying their weddings for 15 years for a shot at an aspirational firm or school, I’ve got to start asking what people think they go to work for. You’ll forgive me if that’s not the kind of question I think gets answered by debating the stability of specific law firms.</p>
<p>Sure, that’s why I stated that he may need to make $60k in revenue for $40k of (pre-tax) profit. </p>
<p>Again, keep in mind that this won’t be a large practice, and is not meant to be. The ‘office’ is probably just a home office. Many of the ‘expenses’ are therefore ones that the guy would be incurring anyway just as a matter of daily life. </p>
<p>Or be an independent contractor, just like those IT guys are. Again, I’m quite sure that there are plenty of low-tier law firms who would happily contract work out to you for some (relatively) low hourly fee. You can institute that as your ‘law firm’, in the same way that many independent IT contractors behave as (sole-proprietor) small businesses. </p>
<p>Certainly, I agree that those IT contractors don’t receive benefits, and an independent lawyer acting as a ‘law firm’ won’t either. But I don’t see that as a serious problem unless you have a pre-existing expensive health condition. Many (probably most) IT contractors either fund their own health insurance and retirement funds or choose to do without, and they don’t seem to be particularly worried. A Harvard/Yale lawyer looking for a stop-out could do the same.</p>
<p>Again, keep in mind that I don’t mean that the lawyer would be doing this forever, but merely temporarily before returning to a regular law position. As far as I can tell, LRAP can be invoked as necessary whenever your income drops below a certain threshold. </p>
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<p>Then I would first strongly question the business strategies of those law firms. Websites are so cheap to build and operate these days that I can’t fathom a single reason why any small business wouldn’t want to have one, simply as brochure-ware.</p>
<p>But more importantly, I would argue that that notion is entirely endogenous: if they don’t have websites or marketing materials precisely because they have nothing to brag about. Let’s face it. Most low-tier law firms consist of attorneys with unremarkable educations and records. But having a Harvard or Yale-educated lawyer on their staff would be considered a major selling point. </p>
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<p>Absolutely wrong. Again, the clientele we’re talking about are regular people who have little notion for which lawyers are strong and which aren’t, and certainly don’t know which law schools are strong. Most regular people have only heard of Harvard and Yale. </p>
<p>So then simply consider those low-tier law firms who do have websites and marketing materials, for which I list just a few below (and there are surely many more like them). Are they truly no such law firms that wouldn’t pay $40-60k to hire a Harvard/Yale lawyer, even if with the understanding that he won’t be working particularly hard? Heck, I suspect some of those firms would pay that fee just for the right to market and leverage the Harvard/Yale brand name, as doing so would probably return much more than that in terms of new business, and your actually agreeing to work for them (even if not very hard) is just a bonus. </p>
<p>As an example, I suspect some of the following creepy law firms would gladly pay to market themselves as offering Harvard or Yale-trained lawyers (and thereby become even creepier). Consider their clientele: (alleged) drug dealers, domestic violence perpetrators, sex offenders, drunk drivers, and so forth. This is precisely the clientele that would be deeply swayed by a Harvard/Yale credential. </p>
<p>And besides, nobody is saying that you should restrict yourself to firms that only pay less than $40-60k a year. You could choose to work for a larger firm that would normally pay more, but with a prior understanding that you actually want to be paid less, but in exchange for not being required to work long hours: i.e., you’re walking out the door at 5PM, no weekend work, and, say, 2-3 months of vacation/leave (perhaps some of it unpaid). I suspect that many law firms would agree to those conditions if they’re paying you only $40k a year. Or you could take higher pay, but then you lose some (but not all) of the LRAP benefits. </p>
<p>One could also become an adjunct non-tenure-track lecturer at a low-tier or even an unaccredited law school. Academia is widely noted for its laid-back lifestyle, especially if you’re not pushing for tenure. If you’re a HLS/YLS grad, you can probably find one of these schools who would offer you a lecturing contract, especially because you’re not asking for much pay.</p>
<p>Surely you could be a little smoother than that. I would actually turn the situation around, and note that you are not marrying her *to protect her<a href=“from%20your%20debt”>/i</a>. After all, once you marry somebody, his debt now becomes your debt. </p>
<p>Nor do I find this particularly shocking or unromantic. I once heard a story of a guy who was dating a girl while undergoing series of severe financial reverses due to bad business and investment decisions that could have resulted in his need to declare personal bankruptcy. The girl, however, was independently wealthy. They didn’t dare become married until his financial status was resolved, which potentially could have taken years. After all, why should they, as a couple, place her personal wealth at risk? She wasn’t involved in any of those poor business/investment decisions. If he needs to declare bankruptcy, then the creditors would and should seize only his assets, not hers. Besides, they’re living together anyway (in a house that she owns), and if he were to declare bankruptcy, the relationship would not change dramatically, but clearly would if she too lost all her assets.</p>
<p>Hence, I would argue that whatever tense moments may occur because you won’t marry somebody in order to shield yourself under the LRAP umbrella, they pale in comparison to the tense moments incurred by a formally married couple jointly undergoing financial stress. Financial problems are one of the leading causes of relationship breakups.</p>
<p>If your significant other becomes irreconciliably angry with you because you won’t get married–which, in this hypothetical context where it’s financially sensible to NOT marry, is solely a societal signifier–then maybe you shouldn’t be making plans to spend the rest of your life with this person. Similarly, if you personally can’t handle the thought of living with someone for decades without a beautiful wedding and a fancy certificate, then you shouldn’t undertake this course of action. But that barrier is personal and emotional.</p>
<p>Skadden was never an option for anyone not in the top of the class at GULC, though that’s not really the issue. The question is how much scholarship money it would take to offset the diminished career prospects that result from going to Georgetown over, say, Columbia. And it’s not just an issue of having to “settle” for a firm that’s lower in the largely-irrelevant Vault rankings (law students are accustomed to basing their entire opinion of an organization on where it ranks on a list somebody publishes); it’s an issue of getting any job that would let you comfortably repay your debt.</p>
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<p>Does that really sound like a realistic profit margin for a sole practitioner in his first year of practice?</p>
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<p>Right, this is the doc review option I mentioned. You’re actually probably more likely to be working for a big firm involved in complex litigation or a major transaction. But these contract attorneys aren’t sole practitioners being retained by the large firms, they’re just temps.</p>
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<p>Probably not a lot, since again I think you’re dramatically overestimating how much anybody cares about educational credentials in picking a lawyer for something like a will or incorporating a small business. Many people don’t even ask their lawyer where they went to school, the same way they don’t ask their doctor or accountant. I think people would be more likely to assume that a Harvard-educated lawyer was going to be too expensive for them than see it as a big selling point.</p>
<p>Do you really think this is true? That the Vault rankings are irrelevant? I hate them, but I’ve been casually browsing lateral postings, and a lot of them specify that they want someone from a “Top 10” firm, or “Top 20,” or whatever. What’s that supposed to mean? If they’re referring to the Vault rankings, then aren’t they more relevant than you think.</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t it be? Again - what exactly is your overhead? This isn’t a ‘law firm’ designed to ever become large, but rather one who that you’re using merely to activate the LRAP umbrella until such time as you’re ready to assume a ‘real’ law job again. </p>
<p>Again, I harken back to the IT world where I can think of a number of guys who run their own small businesses providing IT contracting services (and make far more than $60k of revenue/$40k of profit a year). Their biggest expenditures are for hardware: the vendors periodically design new kit, and they have to learn how to use that kit, and so every one of them has to buy and maintain an entire room full of kit as a practice/test lab. I’ve seen test labs with upwards of 50 Cisco routers and switches, all configured and operating together, and surely there must be labs with hundreds of gear. </p>
<p>But lawyers never need to buy hardware. What exactly are their expenses? The cost of the office - but since this was never designed to be a ‘serious’ firm with potential to grow, a home office should work fine. Malpractice insurance, but I can hardly see how that could consume anywhere near 1/3 of your entire revenue. {Furthermore, IT businesses have to purchase business insurance in case they’re sued by their clients for causing some mishap.} And marketing expenditures, but as you said, most law firms don’t market themselves heavily anyway, and a small one certainly won’t. </p>
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<p>But they could be sole practitioners, or even incorporated, if only for tax purposes. I highly doubt that any LRAP program would care what type of law firm you were, what services you provided, or who your clientele is, so long as you were generating revenue for some type of legal service. {And Yale’s LRAP doesn’t even seem to care if you’re offering a legal service… so you could become an IT worker. Trust me, if you have the intellectual capability to be admitted to Yale Law, in a matter of weeks you could easily pick up sufficient IT skills to make $40-60k a year.} </p>
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<p>I would have to diametrically disagree: I think it would matter a great deal. Sure, I would agree that most regular people don’t care about the educational credentials of their lawyer for executing simple legal matters, but that’s only because so few Harvard and Yale educated lawyers are reasonably available to them. Let’s face it - the overwhelming majority of lawyers out there went to no-name schools. If you have the choice between a lawyer who went to no-name school #1 and another lawyer who went to no-name school #2, then of course you’re going to be indifferent. That’s similar to the choice between eating at McDonalds or Burger King: either way, you know that the food will be unimpressive. </p>
<p>But if a Harvard/Yale educated attorney were actually available to regular people, either through his own law firm or one that he hires onto, that changes the equation dramatically, especially if he is not going to charge much more than what would normally be charged. </p>
<p>Consider the following firms that tout their ‘Harvard-trained’ or law backgrounds. </p>
<p>Even more poignantly, the ‘Iowa bankruptcy attorney’ firm of Gandy Law Offices didn’t even go to Harvard Law, but only to Harvard for undergrad, but still claims in boldface that “our lead attorney is Harvard educated” and conveniently omits from the front page where he actually went to law school (UTAustin). Similarly, the law firm of Beebe & O’Neill tout a father and son team that both are “Harvard educated”, but only for undergrad. </p>
<p>"Wouldn’t you rather hire a Harvard-educated lawyer who won a record $5.3 million verdict?</p>
<p>[NewHome[/url</a>]</p>
<p>The point simply is, Harvard is the most powerful brand name in all of education, instantly recognizable by regular people in a way that no other school is. If you can’t find a single no-name law firm that won’t pay you just $40k a year in return for the rights to leverage the Harvard brand, even if you stipulate that you’re not going to work particularly hard for that law firm, frankly, something is wrong. Heck, I know people who graduated from no-name low tier law schools who took jobs at no-name law firms and made far more than that in their first year, and they obviously can’t provide the marketing boost that a Harvard graduate would. Nor do they seem to be working particularly hard: ‘small-law’ clearly does not have the culture of strenuous working hours that biglaw does. </p>
<p>As an example, take Southwestern University Law School, which I would consider to be an unremarkable, average law school that clearly lacks of marketable brand name. Well over 90% of the 2008 graduates who were seeking employment find a job (even assuming that all 11 graduates whose employment status was unknown were all unemployed). Even the lowest paid graduate who took jobs in the private sector (hence, not counting clerks) still made $47k. You’d be providing the Harvard brand to any law firm that hires you, and you’d only be asking for $40k. Do you really think you can’t find a single law firm that would take you up on that? </p>
<p>Yes, surely I could be smoother than that; the quote was meant to show how the S.O. might caustically interpret the “I’m hoping to protect you from my debt” argument. </p>
<p>I don’t doubt there are people who can happily disregard the symbolism of marriage or couples who may value it but decide that financial reasons over-ride experiencing that particlar happiness. I’m also certain that most truly well-adjusted couples could have the discussion, at least, without relationship ending fireworks. But…</p>
<p>Most people do value marriage as a sign of higher commitment and most would balk at the idea of spending a decade and a half with someone unwilling/unable to put them up on a pedastal before God and sundry and declare them “the One”. Obviously not all marriages work out, but I think your collective position on one hand overestimates the percentage of the dating pool that’s doesn’t view that kind of wait as a serious risk and on the other hand gives short shift to the happiness most people feel about evidencing their aspiring dedication to another in the way commonly accepted in our culture. </p>
<p>I fully acknowlege that money problems are a huge issue in relationships, and that one debt-ridden half of a couple can making talk of waiting reasonable. That doesn’t make waiting on marriage an easy out, though. It just means that your debt has put you between a rock and a hard place. You’ve just replaced one potentially negative consequence on your relationships with another. (It bears mentioning that if one partner has debt that severe, you aren’t going to avoid those money discussions by simply not popping the question, unless you anticipate not co-habitating during that time, either.)</p>
<p>That brings me back to why I think the marriage issue illustrates my broader point. Personal money problems have negative consequences on relationships. Debt makes it harder to settle down and raise a family; to dedicate time to your (non)spouse and kids. </p>
<p>Whether it’s delaying a wedding, delaying having kids, accepting that money stress will be a part of your most significant relationship, whatever … I’m prompted to ask why you think you want to get up and go to work every morning anyway? Who is that career for; what does it serve and which of your goals are subservient to which? </p>
<p>That debt is going to hang around for a long time, so making a good decision about it requires one to ask oneself “what kind of person will I be in ten years?”. Making the debt decision only from the perspective of the ambitious law-student-to-be will chain one, to some extent, to those priorities over a time in which one might undergo radical changes of character.</p>
<p>Well, I’m atheist so my S.O. had better not want me to put him up on a pedestal before God. Marriage should be purely a civil institution anyway. But I acknowledge that I am in the minority, particularly on the first count.</p>
<p>Allow me to proffer an alternative that may thread the needle. It may be possible, depending on the religious or personal beliefs of the couple involved, for them to indeed be ‘married’ in the sense of holding a ceremony that is celebrated and sanctioned within the religion held by the two participants, but just not have the marriage be civilly recognized for legal/financial purposes. That may involve holding the ceremony in a church outside of the United States and simply ‘neglecting’ to register that marriage in the country until such time as all debts have been extinguished. </p>
<p>Nor would I find such a marriage to be a sham of any kind. As one devoutly religious friend of mine once told me, his civil marriage certificate means nothing to him or his wife; it’s just a silly piece of paper which they could easily dispense with at any time. What matters to him and his wife is the religious commitment to marriage that they made to each other, overseen by the religious authorities of their church and witnessed by their friends. </p>
<p>Personally, I find it silly that any LRAP program would stipulate that the payout umbrella according to the income of the spouse, as that’s a variant on the theme of the infamous ‘marriage penalty’. However, given that such stipulations exist, I see nothing wrong with avoiding them by simply not formally registering one’s marriage. Surely, as a Harvard or Yale Law educated lawyer, one could work out the specific legal details to avoid becoming legally married for the purposes of LRAP payouts. Yet you would still be making a deep, religious or culturally based, and public declaration of commitment to your spouse, and I think that ought to satisfy most reasonable people. Sure, you wouldn’t be legally married, but again, I would argue that that actually strengthens the marriage, not weakens it, for it quarantines one party’s financial problems from the other party. </p>
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<p>Look, nobody is saying that everybody will be waiting out marriage for the entire 15 years. I consider that to be an extreme case that is undertaken by only a tiny percentage of (shockingly lazy) Harvard and Yale Law graduates. The LRAP can be activated for up to 15 years after graduation, but I expect only a infinitesimally small fraction of such graduates to actually use that entire allotment. {For example, if you’re a Harvard Law graduate and you can’t make more than $40k a year 15 years after you graduated, then unless you’re working for an NGO, there’s clearly something wrong.} Instead, I’ve viewed an LRAP as not only an enabler of NGO work, but also as a temporary stopgap in the event that you’re burned out from biglaw associate work and are looking for a few years of relative relaxation by taking a low-paying but low-stress position at a no-name law firm as I have discussed, or, especially in starting your own law firm or perhaps political career. </p>
<p>For example, Barack Obama clearly is not the scion of a rich family, and has never worked full-time in biglaw in his entire life, his biglaw experience being confined to only summer associate positions. Instead, for his first year after graduating from Harvard Law, he took a fellowship from the University of Chicago to write a book which eventually became Dreams from My Father, and while that fellowship was paid, I doubt that it paid much. Instead, he likely took advantage of the Harvard Law LRAP to cover his debts during that year. The following year, he became a faculty member of UChicago which meant that he probably made too much money to be eligible for the full LRAP payout at the time. Nevertheless, he was able to take a year to do something that he clearly enjoyed and that would eventually win a Grammy and serve as an important foundation piece of his future Presidential campaign. {Interestingly, it was only after he took the academic position at UChicago that he then married Michelle.}</p>
<p>The real value of the LRAP is not that most people will actually invoke its entire 15-year umbrella, but simply the fact that it exists and can be invoked as necessary. It therefore serves as insurance. You probably will never use it, and even if you do, you probably won’t milk it to the hilt, but you reserve the comforting option that you could. The LRAP is therefore akin to insurance. Sure, my house will probably never catch on fire, and even if it does, it probably won’t incinerate completely, but in the highly unlikely event that it ever does, fire insurance provides me with full coverage. That’s the true value of the LRAP. If I, as a Harvard or Yale Law graduate, meet the girl of my dreams and who I intent to marry, I probably will take a higher-paying law job even if that means forgoing the protection of the LRAP umbrella. But the fact that I have that umbrella affords me with extra security that I would not have otherwise.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You must work for the government, in academia or for a 501(c)(3) qualified organization (non-profit). For a private sector job to qualify, it must be “law-related”, meaning that most who hold the particular job are indeed lawyers and the job utilizes the the intellectual skills of one with a legal education. Judicial clerks do not qualify unless the graduate is taking a LIPP eligible position after the clerkship is completed. </p></li>
<li><p>You must actually be working in a paid, full time position to qualify for the LIPP. Unpaid volunteer work does not count.</p></li>
<li><p>All participants in the LIPP who make more than $42,000/year will have to pay part of their own student loans on a graduated scale ([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></li>
<li><p>Participants in the LIPP will have to use the value of their assets to pay at least a portion of their loans. Assets would include a car, a home, a 401k, etc. The LIPP provides an allowance for assets of $8,000 per year (aggregated over time). If one is saving up for a down payment on a home, for example, this is not a lot of protection. </p></li>
<li><p>If one borrows money in law school to replace the expected student contribution from income required by financial aid, that borrowing is ineligible for the LIPP.</p></li>
<li><p>Personal loans from banks are not eligible for the LIPP. Therefore, to the extent that a student needs to borrow funds through private loans above and beyond Stafford Loans and other loans that may or may not be available through Harvard, those borrowings will be ineligible for the LIPP.</p></li>
<li><p>Spousal income is considered when determining eligibility for the LIPP. If the HLS graduate makes less than their spouse, than eligibility is determined based upon half of the joint income.</p></li>
<li><p>Finally, Harvard reserves the right to change the terms of the LRAP at any time in order to “make the best use of funds available.” One who is eligible today may no longer be eligible tomorrow (though, for PR reasons, I assume that this would probably only ever have an effect on those at the margins – I could be wrong). </p></li>
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<p>Moreover, it is not so easy to fit into the parameters of the LIPP. If one does fit, continuing to fit depends upon the participant (a) continuing to work full time at a low-paying job, (b)not accumulating very many assets and (c) marrying someone who also does not make very much money.</p>
<p>All right, you win. There are probably many ways to take LRAP and have a perfect relationship with someone with money. I still maintain that what shocked me was the initial stated willingness to stave off marriage to facilitate the debt to fund a law school education 6 US News ranks above the free one.</p>
<p>I just remember being a starry-eyed student with these same options. Since graduating, I and most of my friends have undergone personal transformations in terms of priorities. It’s different in the specifics, but the broad strokes are clear. We’re not as gung-ho career focused and have put significant attention to family, travel, new hobbies or academic interests; pick whichever might apply to you. You’ve got a lot more options to manage that transition without debt.</p>
<p>When deciding on school, it’s easy to see a partnership at Kirkland (or wherever) as the brass ring and it’s easy to imagine a few extra years of austerity is a manageable payment to get there. But then graduation hits and the reward is a job that’s more punishing and repetetive than class. It’s not the end; ti’s the same struggles with a change of scenery. Pretty fast, a lot of people get tired of depriving themselves of the fruits of their labor. Then they just get tired. </p>
<p>They start to feel like they mortgaged their future freedom just to participate in a new leg of the rat race. At exactly the same time they start to see the things outside their careers that will really make them happy.</p>
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<p>That’s the kicker, ain’t it? I doubt Stafford eligibility covers tuition at Harvard.</p>
<p>A home office in what, a studio apartment? Most recent law grads don’t live in a house that could have a home office; they’d either have to rent one and spend more on rent than they otherwise would, or rent an office. Either way it’s costing them thousands of dollars a year, plus at least some money for marketing (if only to tell everyone they went to Harvard), since they have no existing clients or network, plus administrative help (I guess they could try to handle intake/records/calls/billing for the dozens or hundreds of clients they’d need, but it sounds like a recipe for disaster, or at least a real drag on the lifestyle they’re trying to lead), office supplies, malpractice insurance, bar dues, CLE classes and Lexis/Westlaw/whatever. </p>
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<p>Whatever benefit being able to claim you have a lawyer from Harvard at your firm gives (and again, given how little people care about the educational credentials of their lawyers, I don’t think it’s a huge benefit; the fact that some people try to use the name doesn’t mean it’s doing anything for them), it’s almost certainly not worth $40K a year to a small firm.</p>
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<p>Except the firms are not going to bother retaining your “firm” when they could just hire a temp. The “sole practitioner” would need to have their own malpractice insurance, which would probably wipe out whatever tax benefits this arrangement would give them.</p>
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<p>This would seem to mean that virtually any job with a firm or in-house legal department (including paralegals) would qualify, along with a bunch of others.</p>
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<p>It’s actually $10K to start + $8K a year, and they don’t necessarily count all of your assets over the allowance (100% of the amount over counts in the first year, then 90% in the second year and so on). It seems pretty generous for people who aren’t making much.</p>
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<p>No, any educational loans are going to be eligible as long as they don’t exceed the student financial aid budget - calculated student contribution and grants. Not just Stafford loans.</p>
<p>Which is why I left in a $20,000 per year cushion. Sounds highly doable to me. Again, that’s not far off from what most IT small-business contractors spend every year to build their business and they have to buy hardware, in addition to an office, insurance, business licenses, client management tools, and whatnot. </p>
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<p>Then why did I find so many small firms that brag about their Harvard credentials, if it doesn’t seem to matter? </p>
<p>More importantly, if even the lowest paid private sector starting salary from an average law school such as Southwestern Law was $47k, and the average Southwestern Law graduate seems to make about $70-80k or so, I find it highly implausible that somebody from Harvard Law couldn’t find some law firm willing to pay them $40k (and let’s say no benefits), even in exchange for a relatively light workload. Even if we make the heroic assumption that Southwestern Law graduates are of equivalent quality as Harvard Law graduates and the marketing value of the Harvard brand is nil, it would still mean that I would be employing half the lawyer (for effectively working ‘half-time’) for half the price. Sounds reasonable to me. </p>
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<p>Then how do the temporary doc-reviewers handle it? Presumably they’re not carrying such expensive malpractice insurance to wipe out their reviewing fees, otherwise why would anybody do it at all? </p>
<p>The bottom line is, Americanski, you have to be a little entrepreneurial and come up with some new ideas, not simply nay-say your way to oblivion. Come on, if you’re a Harvard Law graduate, surely you can find some way to string together a laid-back legal career that will pay you only $40k a year, whether that be working at some low-level law firm, lecturing at some low-tier or even unaccredited law school, working as inhouse counsel at some regular firm, starting your own part-time law firm, or a combination of all of the above. Like I said, if IT contractors who never even graduated from college (or in some cases, even high school) can make $40k a year without having to work particularly hard, why can’t you?</p>
<p>It does appear to me that traditional private loans are eligible for coverage under Harvard’s program.</p>
<p>And I also agree that it’s possible to set up a laid-back legal job earning $40k or so a year. It’s not necessary to have an actual office to be a solo. Plenty of solos rent “virtual offices” for $100 or $200 a month which give you a telephone number; a fax number; an address to receive mail; conference rooms to meet clients; etc. Also, malpractice insurance is not very expensive. My first year as a solo it was about $1500. Further it’s possible to set up a solo practice where your clients are other attorneys – for example by doing court appearances for them. It’s not lucrative work but if you have a decent relationship with a few attorneys it’s possible to eke out some income.</p>
<p>That said, I do see some problems with this Harvard program. First, they apparently have the right to pull the rug out from under you any time they want. I think this is a real danger if they get the sense you are trying to slack on their dime.</p>
<p>Second, while it can be fun to live the life of a starving student in your late teens and early 20s, I’m not sure I would want to do it well into my 30s. Even putting aside marriage, if you want to buy a house in the suburbs; have children; and so forth, being on the Harvard slacker track would seem to put a crimp in those sorts of plans.</p>
<p>I guess it could work if you went into a family law practice or business, but again I suspect that if Harvard got the impression you were gaming the system, they would change the rules on you.</p>
<p>This doesn’t exclude private loans, and Harvard clearly considers private student loans to be “law school education loans,” as they say elsewhere on the financial aid site:</p>
<p>First, someone said I was wrong when I stated that law schools are not need blind. I will reiterate again that law schools are not need blind. Many law school applications require applicants to check a box indicating whether they plan to apply for financial aid. There is not a law school of which I am aware that states that it will not take an applicant’s intention and/or need to apply for financial aid into consideration when making admissions decisions. In practice, financial need can be a consideration, particularly for applicants at the margins. If there are law schools that state that their admissions are indeed need blind, please let me know and I will stand corrected.</p>
<p>Second, with respect to HLS’s LIPP, for those students who have financial need above and beyond grants and Stafford Loans, a limited number of private loans are available. To the extent that those loans are stated to be personal loans (which may be guaranteed by a student’s parents or other credit-worthy individuals) rather than law school loans, those loans may not be covered by the LIPP. I do know of instances where this has been true and graduates have been denied assistance under LIPP for the private portion of their loans. Again, if someone knows of a stated HLS policy that mandates that all loans taken where the proceeds are used to pay tuition will be included in the LIPP should let me know and I will stand corrected.</p>