High Cost of Law School Loans
Today’s “Most Read” article on ABA News is “Law Dean Says Schools ‘Exploiting’ Students Who Don’t Succeed”. Richard Matasar, Dean of New York Law School, had this to say at a recent Association of American Law Schools Conference:
We should be ashamed of ourselves. We own our students’ outcomes. We took them. We took their money. We live on their money to pay to come to San Diego. And if they don’t have a good outcome in life, we’re exploiting them. It’s our responsibility to own the outcomes of our institutions. If they’re not doing well … it’s gotta be fixed. Or we should shut the damn place down. And that’s a moral responsibility that we bear in the academy. It’s a leadership responsibility that each of us has. And damn the U.S. News if it affects our rankings. The kids are not gonna show up. Do you know that LSAT registrations are flat to down this year. That students’ applications to law school are flat to down in a substantial number of law schools. That’s never happened in a downturn in the economy before. They’re catching on. Maybe this thing they are doing is not so valuable. Maybe the chance at being in the top 10% is not a good enough lottery shot in order to effectively spend $120,000 and see it blow up at the end of three years of law school. [Via TaxProf]
Matasar was commenting on a recent article in Forbes that detailed the plight of Joel Kellum and Jennifer Coultas, two students who met at Case Western School of Law and incurred $194k worth of loans by the time they graduated in 1995. They married but divorced last year – due in part to the strain of the huge debt load. According to Kellum, “Two people with this much debt just shouldn’t be together”.
Last week, Above the Law broke the story of the mock New York Craigslist job posting advertising a $30k attorney job at a private 20 attorney firm in Manhattan – that ended up receiving over 100 resumes, the vast majority of which were in earnest. All of this points to an information mismatch – if non top 30 law schools were forced to disclose to applicants that only top students could be expected to get six figure jobs and that the rest may struggle in finding a legal job, would law school students choose to enroll, knowing that the average law school debt is $100k?
January 26th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Law school debt is a major problem facing many if not most attorneys leaving law school. With tuition costs rising much more quickly than inflation and starting salaries, and with Congress’s failure to give graduates any meaningful tax assistance (a single filer has to make no more than $50k/year to get about $625 in tax savings, which is less than a month’s interest on a recent graduate’s loans), it’s no wonder that LSAT registration is flat and many people looking at graduate programs are foregoing legal careers. The system of law school financing is completely broken and is in need of a major overhaul. It’s too bad most law school deans have higher priorities.
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I graduated from UMiami law five years ago and have friends swimming in over 200k debt w/ no chance of paying it off. They are praying that the bankruptcy laws change so that they can wipe out the debt like many attorneys did before 98 i believe it was. The private loans w/ the high interest rates are the worst ones. And the jobs most people end up w/, at least here in south florida, don’t pay squat and the competition for those jobs is fierce w/ four law schools in the Miami area. What a nightmare! If you are from overseas and can pay cash for your education and speak 4 languages, no problem. But if you are taking out loans to finance your education and come out of school in the middle of the pack, do something else.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I do realize it is a problem but a quality education should cost. There are a lot of lower cost schools available but you do have to pay a tidy sum to attend a premier law school.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:09 am
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