So I got into two law schools, 1 is more highly ranked but will cost $150,000 more to attend then the other school I got into. Should I go to the cheaper one because of the price?
One is in the Top 50 the other is in the top 150 but has the same law school transparency score.
If one is in the “top 50”, it must be outside the top 20 or 30, so in the 40s? If one is in the “top 150”, it must be outside the top 100.
I wouldn’t go to either, but definitely not the one in the “top 150”.
@LetsGoMets: It depends on what the schools are. Which schools are we talking about?
Either retake and ace the LSAT, or don’t go to law school. Sorry.
I wouldn’t go to either.
I’m assuming by top 50 you mean something that is in the 30-50 range, otherwise you would’ve said “top 30” or “top 20” or so. So for demonstration purposes I picked two schools in that range: one ranked in the 30s (Boston College, tied for #34) and one ranked in the 40s (Washington and Lee, tied for #42). For a top 150 school, I picked University of San Francisco (ranked #138). All rankings are from USNWR.
BC’s post-law school employment has varied from 84% to 90% over the past 3 years. Out of 270 graduating class members, 210 are in jobs that require bar passage, which is good. Only 51 are working at large law firms (500+ lawyers); 36 are working at medium-sized law firms (100-500 lawyers). 29 went into judicial clerkships. Others went into a variety of other fields like business, government, etc.
Only those at the medium to large law firms are averaging the kind of salary (medians of $125-160K) that would enable them to repay loans of $150K+. The average salaries at the smaller law firms were all less than $85,000 a year, and the salaries at jobs outside of the law firms were all less than $75,000. The government and public lawyers were averaging around $50-60K. Those in the judicial clerkships who move onto large law firms might be okay.
At W&L only 15 were in large law firms with an additional 4 in medium law firms (out of a class of 127). There were 7 federal clerkships and 10 state and local ones. W&L doesn’t report salaries in their disclosure but all the data I’ve seen suggest that they’re probably quite similar to the BC ones - the 19 alumni who went to medium to large firms are probably the only ones cracking six figures.
At the University of San Francisco, out of 192 graduates in the class of 2014, only 73 of them got jobs that required bar passage (that’s less than half). 25% of the graduating class was still unemployed and seeking employment 9 months after graduation, and a further 5% had just found jobs and were beginning them 10 months after graduation. There were only 2 judicial clerkships.
Only 10 of those employed students were at large law firms with a further 3 at medium-sized law firms. The 10 (less than 10% of the class) made a median of $152,000 a year. The numbers at the medium-sized law firms were too small to compute medians, but those at quite small firms (50 or less) were making a median of $72,500 or less. The average salary in the the other fields were $77,000 or less, and most were in the $50-60K range.
Put another way:
-About 32% of Boston College alumni are working in jobs that average enough money to pay back $150K worth of debt.
-About 14% of Washington & Lee alumni are working these types of jobs.
-About 6.7% of USF alumni are working these types of jobs.
Now, this isn’t a full/complete picture - those law clerks can defer their loans during the clerkship and will probably get plum jobs after finishing. Also, some of those business lawyers are making good money if they are in-house counsel to big firms (although even at BC, the 75th percentile of business salaries was still only $85,000. The only other jobs there where the 75th percentile approached six figures was law firms with 25 to 100 lawyers).
So the only one I would even consider would be the top 50ish school, and I would still probably turn them down. The odds are too high that you won’t make enough money to repay the loans. And even if you did by chance get one of those Big Law jobs, you’re then shackled to it for 10+ years so you can pay down your debt. Any small financial misstep can be a catastrophe.
I love the analysis @juillet but really your conclusion really boils down to that no one should go to any law school below the top 20 if they have to pay for it. I just don’t think that’s right. First of all, you’re overestimating how much salary it takes to support a $150,000 legal education. Borrowing it all is unusual and an extreme case, but even if that’s the case, the student repayment would be something like $800-1000 per month. I think most sensible people could support that on a $75,000 salary, and don’t need the $150,000 starting salaries you premised your analysis on. And if you can’t find that prestige job in Boston on DC, you can live in Richmond or Roanoke or Albany or Worcester and be a pillar of the local legal community. Going to BC or W&L are very good options for most everyone and have a greater chance of giving someone a lucrative and fulfilling career than not going to law school at all. The odds are in your favor that you will get a good job, get paid well as a lawyer and will be better off. It’s just that the odds of that happening have decreased over where they were a decade ago, from, say, 88% to 70%. Heck, I’d take those odds over going into some entry marketing job out of college with $40k in existing student debt.
@spayurpets: Even if you somehow get away with only borrowing 150,000 (which is far from borrowing it all–150k may cover tuition, maybe, but you still have to eat), you’re still looking at payments of [url=<a href=“https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-financial-aid/office-of-financial-aid/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=61621%5D1300%5B/url”>https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-financial-aid/office-of-financial-aid/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=61621]1300[/url] minimum on the 25 year plan. 1300 a month is 15,600 per year, after taxes. Assuming a person is single with no dependents, and lives in a state with no income tax, 75k after taxes is about 60k, so your loans take up a full quarter of your after tax income.
Of course, most lawyer jobs don’t pay 75k starting out. They either pay biglaw market (or thereabouts) or pay small law rates (30-40k).
Yes, agreed @Demosthenes49 but I still think the odds are in your favor. Will you honestly tell me that most people should not take that bet if they were presented to them?: Going to BC Law and having,say, a 50-50 chance of being a successful lawyer (and getting about $1,000,000-$2,000,000 in additional lifetime income) but taking on $150,000 debt, or taking an entry level college graduate position that has basically minimal chance of climbing out of the middle class without a graduate degree. I know what I would tell my child given these odds.
Anyway, where do you get that small law is $30-40k? Entry level positions at solo and small firms in Boston are easily double what you’re talking about. And non-attorney jobs get you $50,000 easy (paralegal, contract reviewer, legal assistant). The only positions that get only $30,000 are attorney temp positions and doc reviewer, which is the attorney version of unemployment. The pessimism about the legal profession is ridiculously overdone.
This is a totally false dichotomy. Even if we said that Boston College gave you a 50% chance of being a successful lawyer, that’s basically flipping a coin with $150K of debt over my head. I suppose it depends on how risk-averse you are, but I certainly would not make that choice. (In fact, it’s one of the reasons I decided against applying to law school myself, and I graduated college the same year the bottom went out so I had no idea how bad it would get.)
But the other side is that this is a complete underestimate of what a bachelor’s-level graduate with a marketing major or something can do. It’s not “minimal odds” of climbing out of the middle-class. To take your marketing example, a mid-career market analyst or researcher can easily make between $55,000 and $75,000, which is a pretty middle-class income. And marketing and advertising managers average $123,000 a year (http://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/advertising-promotions-and-marketing-managers.htm). And there are lots of other majors and careers - computer science, math, statistics, political science, economics, nursing, education - that lead to good career outcomes with a bachelor’s degree. (Also, why are we comparing BAs with JDs? There’s also the option that that BA does a different graduate degree with better odds.)
The NALP says that public interest lawyers just starting out actually do average around $45-55,000 a year (http://www.nalp.org/july14research#table1) and 11-15 years in are making around $65-85,000, which is what a person with a bachelor’s could make after 11-15 years of working and appropriate promotions. But even if we say an entry-level lawyer in a small Boston firm can make $60-80,000 a year to start out with…there are many careers that a person can get a graduate degree and start out making around that much without the $150K+ in debt hanging over their head. Mid-career social science majors without a bachelor’s degree average in that range, and when I say “mid-career” I mean “5-10 years of experience.”
So if you go to law school and end up starting at a small firm, chances are really good that your friends who went straight to work after college are making around the same amount as you. Or, they may be making around $10K less than you, but they also have less than a third of your debt.
And who the heck wants to spend three years and $200,000 on a law degree and end up doing a job that you can do with a BA and a certificate from a community college? (Not that I’m disdaining paralegal work, because I think it’s awesome. It’s just that I don’t think attorneys with six-figure debt want to be legal assistants.)
If you can’t get into a law school in the top 50, don’t go. If you can’t get into a school in the top 25, think long and hard before going.
Maybe because I worked in Boston and I am too close to this, but my experience is that BC lawyers are excellent, so anecdotally I see it as absurd to think that you can’t be successful as an attorney with a degree from a top 25 school. BC is likely the second best law school in one of the largest and prestigious legal markets in the country (unless you believe BU is a better school); I just don’t think that people realize how many opportunities would be open to you regionally with a law degree the equivalent of BC. If you only think of DC, NY, LA and Chicago, you’re missing wide swaths of legal jobs that pay well and give you wonderful career opportunities.
I’m positive that’s true and that’s not in question at all.
The question is whether someone should borrow $150,000 for those opportunities.
It’s not that I don’t think law schools in the 26 to 50 range are good to great - they are. I’m not even in law and I’ve heard that Boston College is excellent. Really, 32% of your graduates at medium to large law firms averaging $125-160K and a substantial portion in judicial clerkships is quite good!
But do you want to be burdened with $150,000 of debt when your likely salary is somewhere around $65,000 to $85,000 and may never actually get to the $125K level (or, if it does, will only get there after 10-15 years of work and after your loans are scheduled to be repaid already)? That’s for every person to decide for themselves, but my instinct is no.
It’s also important to factor in college debt when making the decision to attend any graduate school, especially law school.
And from the ABA: “Revised outlook for lawyer jobs is glum.”
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/revised_outlook_for_growth_in_lawyer_jobs_is_glum/
Basically 15,700 new lawyer jobs on average per year, while law schools pump out 40,000 new JDs per year, more than double the number of attorneys needed-per BLS.
And it’s not as if there’s guaranteed salary growth if you do get a lawyer job:
http://qz.com/392091/a-statistical-breakdown-of-how-recent-law-school-graduates-are-utterly-screwed/
OP hasn’t been back in over a week, but in the event s/he is reading this, my advice would be to think very, very carefully about attending law school.
what would be your response to the question if the choice were between #6 and #14?
Huge difference in job prospects between NYU and GULC, since GULC’s class is so large and there are hundreds to place. That being said, NYU at sticker is always a bad choice, unless the family is wealthy. OTOH, GULC is not known for generous merit aid…
Family has some means but can’t cover full COA. GULC sent student an email soliciting a negotiation for merit aid.t The angst lies in not knowing at what $$ point ( if there is one) the (potential) smaller debt burden from GULC outweighs the better job prospects from NYU. Unknown if any aid forthcoming from NYU. A " named" scholarship is highly unlikely, though .
Are any other acceptances in the mix? An acceptance from NYU would usually mean acceptances from the T7-13 schools, if applications were submitted.
I didn’t go to NYU or Georgetown but in general I’d say that NYU is worth paying a premium, since its placement is better (and that will make your life much easier during law school and during the first 5-10 years out of school). However, if your stats are well above the Georgetown median, then you may well end up in in an equally strong position from there (but keep in mind that it’s tough to say where in the class you’ll end up; I was right at my law school’s median stats and I ended up in the bottom 40%).