Reply to Do you think the costs of professional school (med, law, dental etc) are unsustainable?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Do you think the costs of professional school (med, law, dental etc) are unsustainable?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes. The market cannot sustain it. At least in law, I can't speak to the others.

Right now a big part of the conversation around student debt forgiveness is the idea that we shouldn't forgive the debt of "high paid professionals" because it's like giving these degrees away. But I personally know a number of law school graduates who have never really benefitted financially from those degrees (both people who went to well known and respected schools and some who went to what could be considered diploma mills) and still owe astronomical amounts of money. And the jobs just are not there for them. Especially people who graduated into that down market in 2008/2010 -- some of these folks had decent grades from good law schools but graduated when law firms were deleveraging and many major government employers (including the entire state of California) had extended hiring freezes due to budget shortfalls). They wound up doing doc review as contract attorneys and taking law-adjacent jobs that didn't really reward them for their JDs or bar membership. And by the time the market recovered, they were 6-7 years out of law school and it's very hard to work your way back from that. Taking out 100k (sometimes more) in debt for a career like that is absolutely devastating. I know someone who committed suicide in this situation. Obviously he had serious mental health issues as well, but there is no question that crushing debt and limited job prospects played a big role in what happened.

And I went to law school almost 20 years ago. It's more expensive now. It's a different market with more demand, but outside of a narrow sliver of the market (Big Law associate salaries) the salaries do not justify the cost. Many firms have moved to hiring more staff attorneys and contract lawyers (who make less than associates and, importantly, have no path to counsel or partner roles) as they have re-leveraged with increased demand. It's good for firms but not for freshly minted law graduates.

I have come to think of a law degree as a very, very expensive lottery ticket. If you win, you win very big. But you are very unlikely to win. And unlike the lottery, it's not really chance either. It's going to be dictated by law school grades and connections. Most people entering law school won't get the grades they need (there's a curve, this is by design and definition) and very few have the necessary connections, to make money.

The one path that still makes sense is committing to public interest law and receiving debt forgiveness. But my understanding is that this has actually been quite hard until recently, and even now it's challenging even for those who have spent their entire careers in public interest roles. This should be more straightforward. There is also some weirdness here. All government jobs are considered public interest, but some of these jobs pay close to 200k a year and the relationship to public interest is loose (SEC lawyers technically work for the government but really only technically). It's weird to see debt forgiveness for those jobs but not for someone who has simply struggled to find decent-paying legal work in the private sector. [/quote]

Thank you for this. I’m sending it to my son who is weighing his options about law schools. I went more than 30 years ago when it was $6k and easily handled with student loans (which I was paying off until 35 but it was a small amount) and summer associate pay.  The same law school is now $105k per year[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics