Fantastic Front Page WSJ Article on Employment Prospects Post-Law School

[sakky]

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I am going out on a limb and guessing that most parents do not insist that their children repay them, with interest, what they pay for college. It’s not an issue of parents co-signing for loans. The point is that law schools don’t even claim they will meet demonstrated need. And to the extent that they give need-based aid at all (which they typically do not), it is based on your projected need after assuming you max out on Stafford loans ($20,500 a year) and family contributions. So even if you had nothing at the school gave you 100% of your calculated need (which is unheard of), you’d still be over $60K in the hole, which is by itself far more debt than the average undergrad has.

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<p>I have never disputed that FA for law school works differently than that for undergrad. But I don’t think that’s a relevant point. Whether you personally get stuck with the bill (as with law school), or perhaps your parents ultimately get stuck with the bill (as for undergrad), the point is that somebody in your family is getting stuck with the bill. </p>

<p>Like I said, I don’t think anybody here is so cold-hearted as to just want to deliberately stick our families with bills. So even if undergrad debt is technically not yours (but instead belongs to your family), I would still imagine that you would have a moral obligation to your family to pay it off. Hence, at the end of the day, law school and undergrad debt is basically the same for, either way, you end up paying, either because you’re legally obligated to do so, or you’re morally obligated to do so. </p>

<p>Now I can agree that perhaps the terms of the debt are probably different and easier for undergrad. For example, if your parents cosign, you can probably secure a lower interest rate because the bank is drawing upon a more stable repayment source. Also, I suppose it’s easier to delay or renegotiate payments to your own family than to the bank. But at the end of the day, I would have to imagine that you’re still going to pay your parents back. At least, I hope so. </p>

<p>Now, of course, if you just happen to be born in a rich family that is willing to foot your whole bill for undergrad without repayment, then that’s great. But that’s really no different than if you family were to foot your whole bill for law school. So it’s a wash. </p>

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Lost wages don’t add to your debt load.

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<p>First of all, they should. You should be factoring in ALL costs into your equation, including opportunity costs.</p>

<p>But secondly, even if you don’t want to factor in opportunity costs, you still gotta eat. You still gotta put a roof over your head. Where does that money come from when you’re in pharmacy school? Answer - debt. </p>

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The fact that pharmacy school takes longer doesn’t mean pharmacists have more debt than lawyers.

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<p>Why would you believe otherwise? </p>

<p>Let’s take a comparable example. To attend USC Law School is estimated to cost about 40k a year (not including room/board). USC Pharmacy School (which, interestingly, I could only find for the 2005-2006 year) was 36k. Hence, 3<em>40k = 120k for law school, whereas 36k</em>4 = 144k. Hence, just on tuition alone, pharmacy school costs more. And that doesn’t even include the extra year of living costs incurred because PharmD students have to hang around for another year (and I have no reason to believe that PharmD students would incur lower yearly living costs than would law students).</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usc.edu/schools/pharmacy/pharmd/admission/tuition.html[/url]”>http://www.usc.edu/schools/pharmacy/pharmd/admission/tuition.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://law.usc.edu/admissions/applications/financialaid.cfm[/url]”>http://law.usc.edu/admissions/applications/financialaid.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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And doctoral programs take even longer, yet with the number of fellowships and TAships, I doubt the cost is comparable to law school.

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<p>And that’s why I didn’t talk about PhD programs. You haven’t demonstrated that pharmacists have the kinds of fellowships and TAships available to PhD students. I highly doubt that they do. But, by all means, we can go the pharmacy students here (there are some) and ask.</p>

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And for all I know pharmacists do have more debt; you just haven’t demonstrated that.

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<p>Uh, you haven’t demonstrated that they don’t have more debt. </p>

<p>I am simply saying that there is no a priori reason to believe that law students are carrying more debt than are pharmacy students. If neither of us has any proof beyond that, then I think we should go with what the a-priori evidence shows. </p>

<p>Besides, we have to be careful about what we mean by “law school debt”. Let’s face it. Lots of law students are night students. By their very nature, they don’t carry very much debt, because they hold a fulltime job while studying and hence have a source of income that helps to reduce their debt level. In contrast, there are very few part-time PharmD programs and those are generally only available to those who hold the now-defunct BSPharm degree. I don’t believe any schools currently offer the BSPharm to new students, hence anybody who wants to be a pharmacist today basically has no choice but to attend a full-time PharmD program (and hence rack up a bunch of debt). </p>

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Well, then maybe you could look at the data, and see that the 25th percentile income for pharmacists is more than $10K higher than the 25th percentile income for lawyers. The vet numbers aren’t as good, but if you look at the breakdown, it seems that this is a result of low-paid vets working with livestock in (presumably) low-COL rural areas. And you should probably also consider that the “lawyer” statistics almost certainly don’t include law school graduates who could not find legal employment at all. The point is that there doesn’t seem to be a pharmacy or veterinary equivalent to temporary/contract attorneys. That’s why people write articles about them.

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<p>Certainly, I agree that the lawyers who don’t do well are not doing well. That’s a simple tautology. But my point still stands - the average lawyer does better than the average vet or pharmacist. That is something that the data is quite clear about. </p>

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There is no sense of “entitlement” or “immunity” from financial problems evident anywhere. Your perception of any such thing is clearly driven by some resentment of the legal profession. The purpose of the article is to highlight both the massive gulf between the top and bottom in law and the dire conditions faced by those at the bottom. This makes law very much unlike comparable professions.

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<p>Uh, I think this very thread has demonstrated the very sense of entitlement of which I am referring. You continually try to assert that law student problems are somehow unique, when in fact I think I have shown that others (i.e. pharmacists, vets) have comparable problems. Lawyers are not unique, and shouldn’t feel that they have the right to portray themselves as martyrs. Sure, some lawyers have problems. But lots of people have problems.</p>

<p>I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I don’t resent the legal profession. What I resent is that lawyers or law students automatically feel that they’re automatically entitled to a good job. Nobody is entitled to a good job. Sure, you have some law students coming out with a lot of debt and not getting good jobs. Yet, nobody ever said that you were guaranteed to get a good job, and you should not have presumed that you would. .</p>