For Law School Graduates, Debts If Not Job Offers

nytimes.com:

IF there is ever a class in how to remain calm while trapped beneath $250,000 in loans, Michael Wallerstein ought to teach it.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[littleraerae]

03:37 PM on 01/11/2011

What's interesting is that people keep attending law school yet I thought that these stats were widely known.
Does anyone even attempt to research their future career before throwing away 150K?

[AxelDC]

11:29 AM on 01/11/2011

The economics of legal services makes no sense.  Why are law firms so expensive?  Because they have to pay lawyers high salaries.  Why are lawyers salaries so expensive?  Because lawyers have to graduate from law school first.  Why is law school so expensive?  Because lawyers get paid a lot of money, so students will pay to get into their gild.  This tautology only stands because clients are willing to pay too much for legal fees.  At some point, the system will break down and law school fees and lawyers' salaries will collapse.

Medical schools are expensive because medicine requires expensive equipment and training.  Law school should be no more expensive than any other graduate program.  Universities use their law schools as cash cows, exploiting potential lawyers to fund the rest of the university.   If lawyers graduated with little debt, they could take lower paying jobs without a lifestyle penalty.  The law firms could charge clients less money, which would reduce business expenses across the board.

Unfortunately, the first break in this chain seems to be graduating lawyers with heavy debts but no job prospects.  This will discourage other students from going to law school, reducing demand and forcing universities to lower law school tuition.

[1Woman4Obama]

02:51 PM on 01/10/2011

I started reading the article but when I got to the part about Mr. Wallerstein, and his $250,000 debt having gone to Thomas Jefferson School of Law, I got to angry to end it. I'm not sure who is ultimately responsible here -- but I'd start with shutting down the school, heavily regulating the student loan industry and perhaps giving Wallerstein a lobotomy (joke, of course). If you actually believe there is more than a very slim chance that you'll graduate from a bottom tier law school and ever be able to pay off that much money in student loans, you aren't qualified to practice.

[CTModerate]

10:18 AM on 01/10/2011

This is nothing new. I'm out of law school close to 25 years and when I go back to my reunions, the people actually practicing law is in the extreme minority. My husband is a Columbia Law Grad, and he doesn't practice law either, and he had top grades as well. If you're not accepted into a top 20 law school, don't even bother with law school. It's a huge waste of time and money. And, even if accepted to a top 20 school, you better work your butt off to be in the top 10% of the class if you want a job as an attorney. I was in the top 10% in a top regional school and was lucky enough to work in the big NYC firms long enough to pay off my debts, but then I got out. It's a horrible life with no end in sight.

[bannorhill]

10:12 AM on 01/10/2011

Too many lawyers.

[Tails]

01:11 AM on 01/10/2011

As soon as the Boomers start to retire, the legal market well open back up.

[1donewrong]

10:52 PM on 01/09/2011

Time for the govt to go after non profit colleges with the same vigor as they do with for profit colleges. We have 5% of the worlds population and 47% of the worlds attorneys. JD's just like sociology majors, psychology and black and women studies should be banned

[Andra Claudia Garcia]

10:47 PM on 01/09/2011

As a current Senior in college the advice that I got from well pretty much everyone was, "STAY IN SCHOOL." I have always wanted to go to law school but I cannot bear to sign my good name next to the dotted line of another bank loan application. My mother likes to remind me always that I could have "put a down payment on a house" already. It makes me sad to know that either I will never go on to more schooling or that I must wait and perform the juggling act.

[CTModerate]

10:20 AM on 01/10/2011

If you want to stay in school and spend the money, then do it on something you love. I went to law school 25 years ago, as did my husband, and neither of us practices law.

[1Woman4Obama]

02:56 PM on 01/10/2011

My advice -- first, if at all possible, do not go to law school straight out of college. Get a job for a year or two in a law firm or in a government position with lawyers and really know that it is what you want to do. Second, don't borrow more money during school that you will make your first year out. Go to law school if you can afford it. Rack up $160k in debt if you go to a top 20 school, know you can make top grades and know you can work 50+ hours a week for at least 3 years. I know too many lawyers who didn't really know what they were getting into and absolutely hate it. It can be a versatile degree but the increased expensive is making is less so.

[Johnny in Queens]

10:33 PM on 01/09/2011

It was an interesting article. I never went to law school but had a number of friends who went to law school - including an ex-girlfriend- and most got jobs at big prestigious law firms. (Granted, this was fifteen years ago.) Talk about an unhappy bunch of people. I finally quit going to my girlfriend's law school friend parties because it was hours and hours of whining and moaning and complaining about billable hours and how the work was boring and monotonous. I don't think a single one is still working in a law firm today. And most have left the law and either just dropped out of the work force (e.g. had babies) or have shifted careers. I'm not sure I understand the motivation behind the folks being interviewed here; if they didn't have jobs before I can't see they'll get one now.

[Fabini]

08:09 PM on 01/09/2011

If there are any unemployed lawyers out there who understand labor law in New Hampshire, I have some work for you. Contact me at [e-mail]

[Fromageball]

06:25 PM on 01/09/2011

While I absolutely agree that law school has for the most part turned into a scam of epic proportions(and something needs to be done about student loans)...there is also some blame to be placed on the students who enter law school KNOWING how saturated/terrible the market is. I know so many people who are either in law school or currently applying, and just as this article says, they all think they will be the exception to the rule. They are sure they will be the ones who come out and get jobs with BigLaw, making these 6 figure salaries. I almost burst out laughing when one girl I know recently got laid off, but not to worry, she was applying to law school! Wake up people! If you would quit applying and accepting these loans, maybe something would change...

[JStading]

10:45 PM on 01/09/2011

"t­here is also some blame to be placed on the students who enter law school KNOWING how saturated/­terrible the market is"

What US News & World Report/the law schools are doing are tantamount to consumer fraud.  They go through obscene practices to fake the statistics and make sure the information that prospective students get is far from accurate.  Want an example? A number of T14 schools have 100% employed at graduation rates.  How is this possible? Because if you're not employed at graduation, they cut you a $3,500 check for "public interest work" and count you as employed.  Other schools discourage students from responding to the average income surveys if they don't make too much money and all schools use "medium income" stats instead of "mean income" to ensure that the numbers don't reflect reality.  You can only blame the students if they had access to reliable information and made the wrong choice.  Most of the time, they simply relied on the information they had and that information was designed to be wrong.

[corwin]

04:34 PM on 01/09/2011

Thank God people will always need ( reasonably priced) cosmetic dermatology.

[Ichiro51]

12:37 PM on 01/09/2011

This article is long overdue from a major newspaper...but better late than never.

[ssrelso]

11:38 AM on 01/09/2011

Three years out, and massively underemployed. Work part-time at a non-legal job. It would take about 65/hours per week at this job to be able to make my minimum 30-year student loan payments. Meanwhile, my law school lifts not one finger to help its hundreds of recent un/underemployed graduates, save for claiming a $105,000 median starting salary so as to seduce new classes of naive kids into parting with hundreds of thousands of dollars that they didn't have in the first place. It is absolutely disgusting, and for all those naysayers who will respond with lawyer jokes and the like, think of this: law students are the canaries in the coal mine. In a decade's time, what is happening to us will be happening to just about every college graduate. In a decade's time, tuition/room&board at private colleges and the elite public universities will be cresting $100k/YEAR, if tuition continues to increase at a similar rate as it has in the last few decades. Unless those grads can get into Wall Street, management track at a Fortune 500, or obtain an engineering position over all of the H1B candidates, they will simply never be able to pay back their loans. Americans already owe something like $900 billion in student loans, more than CC debt and not much less than mortgages. What will happen to the housing market & the sale of goods when Millenials can't buy anything from Boomers? Utter, irreversible collapse.

[JStading]

12:19 PM on 01/09/2011

Oh, didn't you fall into the cult of poverty?  You're supposed to be lured into law school by the alleged money that's around and then fall in love with zero paying pro bono work to help the poor (while becoming poor yourself).  That's the real dream of the ethical attorney!

One thing you missed was the brilliance of exempting all student loans from bankruptcy discharge.  The result is that neither the government nor any private bank has any reason to avoid lending obscene amounts of funds to people that they know, based on their experience and research, have no way of repaying the loans.  In an environment where discharge is a possibility, it makes no sense to loan a kid $95k for a BA in Germanic Literature, now it makes total sense, since they make more money with higher default rates than they do if the loans are repaid.  I can't imagine how the market is even functioning right now, as many student loans are the size of HELOCs but without the risk.  It seems to me that it would make more sense for their interest rates to be substantially lower, not higher, than such alternate lending devices.

My advice to kids is this - rather than go to college, take out a massive loan and go to your local casino.  Put all of it on one of the side bets on a roulette table (e.g. all on black).  Why? Because winning doubles your money.  If you lose, who cares, the government has said that it wishes to encourage casino gambling more than it wishes to encourage education by drafting the bankruptcy code as it has (since casino debts by bye bye, college loans never do).  It's far safer, way more profitable, and more fun than four years of nonsense.

[Democrat in the South]

12:37 PM on 01/09/2011

That sums it up pretty sadly. F&F

[CTModerate]

10:30 AM on 01/10/2011

I always said that if the loans were reined in, then the cost escalation would be reined in. College and graduate school has gotten so unjustifiably expensive that I think that many people are just going to say "No way." Who can take on $250,000 in debt to make $50,000 a year???? It's just not sane. People are waking up and finally smelling the coffee.

[Benedictus70]

11:01 AM on 01/09/2011

There are WAY too many third and fourth tier law schools out there just getting rich off the federal loans (much like the for-profits). Hint: if your law school advertises on the highway with billboard signs, it's probably not going to get you a job at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. It's been known for a few years now that the law field is really saturated, and a big part of that problem are these hundreds of poor quality drive-thru law schools that have been popping up.

[JStading]

12:19 PM on 01/09/2011

I agree with one exception - the lower tiered schools will produce people who get jobs, but they tend to work as paralegals.

[Tails]

01:10 AM on 01/10/2011

There are exceptions. Texas Tech and the South Texas College of Law turnout a lot of prosecutors.

[Fromageball]

06:33 PM on 01/09/2011

I agree with this, but nowadays even if you go to a better law school your prospects are slim. I really think unless you are at Harvard/Yale/etc with great connections, you should just avoid law school. It's too high of a risk! So many people are applying with a blind eye(which...isn't that the opposite of how a lawyer should approach anything?!), telling themselves that they are exceptional and they will achieve the high status law career regardless of any statistics. I know several people who have either entered law school in the past year or 2, or they are currently applying...why?!

[Benedictus70]

07:51 PM on 01/09/2011

Yeah, pretty much. I was originally going to write "Don't go to law school unless you get into a T14, and even then really think hard about it" but I thought that'd come off as a little too pretentious.

[CTModerate]

10:28 AM on 01/10/2011

My husband graduated from Columbia law 25 years ago with top grades, and, after 2 years in a firm he was pushed out and couldn't find another legal job. He's been working in publishing ever since. So even an Ivy league legal education doesn't guarantee you a job in the field.