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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

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]

Public interest law arguably makes no financial sense even with debt forgiveness programs (which mean taxpayers are paying for those students' educations; there's no free lunch).  That is because of the opportunity costs involved in spending three years in law school instead of earning, saving, and investing money.  A relatively low-paid post-law school job coupled with three years of no earnings while in law school will leave those lawyers financially worse off than if they had acquired other professional or vocational qualifications and gone into the workforce and began earning after high school, community college,  or undergraduate school[/quote]

I mean, it makes sense if you go work for the SEC or DOJ until you get debt forgiveness, and then parlay those jobs into private sector positions that pay much better.

Otherwise, it's only worth it if you really love the work. And even then, I would advise anyone considering to look hard at secondary markets (Philly, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Minneapolis, to name a few) where COL is much lower than in DC-NYC-LA-SF-Seattle. At least in those markets, you stand a chance at, say, owning a home or being able to comfortably afford having children, on a public interest salary. Doing public interest law in DC puts those things out of reach for many after the cost of law school, unless you marry someone making much more.[/quote]

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