Law Schools with Best Public Sector Driven Debt Repayment Programs?

Graduate School Law School
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<p>Questions is as the title says it: Beside from Yale, what schools have the best programs for repaying debt if you take an early job in the public sector? </p>

<p>Also, on a side note, does the work in the public sector have to come immediately after law school, or if you worked in the private sector for 2 years and then switched to the public sector or a non-profit would you still qualify for something? </p>

<p>Also, if anyone could comment on the scope of the repayment at any school using any hard numbers, that'd be helpful as well. </p>

<p>Thanks in advance.</p>

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<p>Harvard, and probably Stanford. The worse the school, the worse the repayment program tends to be, since they a) generally don’t have as much money and b) have a lot more students with low-paying and/or public interest jobs.</p>

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<p>NYU is excellent.</p>

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<p>In regards to the financial aid issue and understanding that this is not for everyone, you may want to look into states where being an active drilling Guardsman is accompanied by State Tuition Waiver. Granted Rutgers Law - Newark or Camden are certainly not at the T14 level, you could be going to law school for nearly free if you were in the Guard. ROI is pretty high when the denominator is close to zero.</p>

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<p>Generally speaking the higher up you go on the totem pole among PRIVATE law schools, the better the loan repayment programs. Most public law schools don’t have very good ones.( UNC-CH dropped its program recently. )</p>

<p>Some lower ranked law schools do have programs where a fixed # of students in each class get to do this. So, you can apply for one of these slots when you apply to the law school. In effect, the LS is offering loan repayment to a fixed # of students in each class. If you get one of the public interest slots, these repayment deals can be as good as one of the top law schools. The problem is that they are pretty competitive. </p>

<p>It pays to read the fine print at every school. Generally speaking, clerkships don’t count and it can be a struggle to pay back loans during a clerkship year if you are living in a large city. </p>

<p>Some count spousal salary and/or assets. </p>

<p>Generally speaking, they have a COLA–cost of living adjustment. A couple of years ago, one school provided that if you made $46,000 a year or less you paid nothing back that year. If you made $86,000 or more, you paid the entire amount. In between, you paid on a sliding scale–so much on earnings up to X, a higher percentage for earnings up to X+n, etc. So, if you made $75,000 you might have to pay about 75% of the loan back that year. The cut offs go up over time if there is inflation, since $46,000 in the year 2007 and the year 2017might be very different things. (I use 2007 because I think that’s the last time I looked up the numbers.)</p>

<p>At the top schools, you CAN go in and out of loan forgiveness. This is a factor to take into account when you fix the term of the loan. For example, some law schools only offer 10 year forgiveness programs. At these schools, if you are interested in public interest, you aren’t going to want to stretch out your repayment over more than 10 years. </p>

<p>Hope that helps a bit. You really do have to look at particular law schools because the programs vary so much.</p>

<p>Oh, and I may be out of date, but last time I checked NYU was one of the LSs at which you had to get a slot at the time you get admitted. If you do, it’s a great program. But if you aren’t a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar or whatever it’s called now, your optiohs were pretty limited. I don’t know if that’s still the case.</p>

<p>PS: I found this on google; it has a good summary of your options at many LSs:
<a href=“http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/probono/lawschools/pi_lrap.html[/url]”>http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/probono/lawschools/pi_lrap.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>^ Wow, that was fantastic, thanks a lot! </p>

<p>I’ll try and take a look at the link and see if I can get some more information out of that.</p>