Taking on Debt for Law School

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, follow the postings of the "retired big law partner" and think about whether your kid would want to work with people like this and 100x worse.

Retired law partner here. I disagree. They're 1000 times worse than me! I'm just telling it like it is.

Just curious: how do you spend your life getting up every day in a job you hate with people who aren’t good to work with. It sounds like you did it for a very long time!and it has to be miserable. I’m not in law and so this is all new to me.

I’m assuming because it paid a ton of money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go to graduate business school (MBA) preferably top 5 program. Paid loans off in 1st year on Wall Street.

Attorney here. Please listen to this poster!!

[Anonymous]

https://abovethelaw.com/2020/04/the-covid-crisis-law-firm-layoff-tracker-whats-your-firm-doing-to-survive/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Retired Biglaw partner here. If your kid can get into a T14 he'd be fine taking on debt. Virtually anyone who graduates from T14 can get a Biglaw job. Maybe not at Covington or something but it doesn't matter -- they all pay the same and they all pay well.

Outside of T14 I wouldn't risk it. You just can't predict how well you're going to do in law school no matter what your LSAT tells you. And once you're out of the T14, and especially once you're out of the top 20-25, you really do need top grades for the big jobs.

Your son needs to remember, though, that Biglaw sucks. Your colleagues suck, they're boring and self-centered AF, your clients are generally evil and also suck, and your opposing counsel also suck. Basically all you're really doing is helping big companies push around huge sums of money. You rarely go to trial, too risky for shareholders, so you spends years doing all kinds of tedious and meaningless pretrial stuff and then settle. And the hours are terrible and you have no life.

There's a reason they pay so much.

I've never met a lawyer who started in Biglaw and moved on to something else and regretted it. Seriously, not one time. That tells me a whole lot.

Really disagree with the bolded part. I went to UVA law when it was about #10. Not sure what it is now. Half of the class was in "the bottom 50%" and they knew it! The level of depression -- like clinical depression -- as a result of not being on the interview list for firms was not unusual. I was very concerned about some friends. I would agree with the rest of what you wrote, though.

The best path is to spend a couple years out of college working before going back to law school. Then keep debt as low as possible, even if that means going to a slightly lesser school (i.e. a #15-25 school, or whatever school is considered good in the area where you want to live long term.). If you want to live in TN, then go to a lawschool in TN -- but only the best one or two that are known there. Other schools might be higher on the list, but reputation is local, so save $$. If you are looking at a much lower ranked school, then you should definitely not take out more than $20-30K in loans. If you are going to one of the upper ranked schools, then I'd still recommend keeping loans to $75K or less.

Your kid will want to start buying a house and eventually having a family, and saving for his/her kids' education.... you don't want to have $140K in loans dragging you down. That is prison. That's why people are willing to work in big firms (in part), when they hate it --- to pay their way out of debtor's prison. Unfortunately, some of them buy the big house and the fancy car, and then their kids need to go to the right schools, and the atty needs to join the country club in order to bring in business.... and before you know it, those golden handcuffs = a life term.

When you have minimal debt, you have options.

I had $70K debt coming out of lawschool and it was tough. Fortunately, DH was very cool about $$ and we paid off my student loans in 2 yrs using all of my salary to get rid of them before we had kids. It made a huge difference for our family to be debt free (except for a $140K mortgage) before having kids.

You may disagree with me, but the actual data does not. In 2018, 72 percent of UVA law grads got jobs in law firms at a median salary of $190k, while another 17 percent got judicial clerkships which are typically springboards to prestige law jobs. So, combined, you're talking nearly 90 percent.

https://www.law.virginia.edu/career-services/employment-data-recent-graduates

Law firms with a median salary of 190 are not big law, lol. That’s the starting salary at big law.

Of course it's the starting salary. It's the employment report for recent graduates. Not a mid career report. Idiot.

Law school career person here. Look at the percentage of salaries reported vs. the number of grads in private practice. Most law schools end up reporting 60-70% of salaries because the grads have to report it to the school. Either they made a conscious effort not to gather smaller firm salaries or those grads didn't report.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Go to graduate business school (MBA) preferably top 5 program. Paid loans off in 1st year on Wall Street.

Attorney here. Please listen to this poster!!

Not every Harvard MBA is going to be a rousing success.

[Anonymous]

Another lawyer steering the kids away from law, though that's not a difficult argument to make - they're not attracted to it anyway.

Also hoping an MBA isn't needed either. Whatever the major, I'm hoping they come away from undergrad with some basic skills that lend themselves to at least a little flexibility for employment. I'm thinking, a little programming, some business courses on the side like finance or accounting, etc.

[Anonymous]

My spouse and I both took on debt and graduated in 2010. We both have Federal attorney jobs so we don't make "DCUM money." Even with PSLF, income minus student loans and daycare bills doesn't leave much left to save. We are happy for our rewarding careers, and are lucky that things worked out for us. Not everyone who wants to go into public service is able to do so.

[Anonymous]

If your kid can get into a top law school with money it’s totally worth it. Top applicants get a lot of money from all but the top 3
(Harvard, Yale, or Stanford). The degree has a lot of value even if they practice big law a few years. This only applies to the best schools for the most part.