Sunday, July 4, 2010

Lawyer Asks Why People Are Still Going to Law School

Happy Independence Day! When you're a law graduate like Griffin Hall with over $100k in students loans, the term independence takes on an entirely new meaning. Some of us are still enslaved to the student loan companies and will be even after death.

I came across a blog post by a lawyer asking why people are still willing to take on so much student debt to enter a depressing and shrinking profession such as law.

I'm am a lawyer. For better or worse. I like my job. I'm not so sure I liked the route it took to get here. But I'm a lucky one. There are many entry level jobs in law that pay about $40 grand a year with horrible benefits. These are the jobs that will suck your will to live. Long hours. Living paycheck to paycheck in a studio apartment paying $600 a month on your student loans even after you've deferred as much as you can (if you were on a full payback plan you would be paying more than $1,000 a month on student loans alone). Mind numbingly boring work (reading and responding to discovery is not rewarding work). Crying about how important it is for the government to just forgive a huge chunk of your loans. We have raised a nation of imbeciles.

Does anyone know the value of a dollar any more? Does anyone realize that when you borrow $150 grand for law school you are going to be expected to pay it back?

I ran the numbers for law school and they worked well enough when I went earlier this decade, as long as I went to the state school and lived at home. I used my savings to pay my $12,000 a year tuition (on average) for the three years I was in school. I graduated with no debt. I factored in the fact that the average salary for graduates at my school was around $55,000. The numbers worked close enough. The numbers didn't work by spending much more than what I did.

I was a little shocked at the ease on which my classmates took on new debt. They lived life to its fullest--there was no sacrifice. The time to pay the piper was still years into the future. I know one person who even paid for his wife's engagement ring with his student loans. Simply incredible.

We have raised a nation of imbeciles.

Why is our society so immune to the danger of debt? Why are they unable to calculate a simple cost benefit analysis and apply that to their situation? Is it because our parents have failed us?

This lucky bastard went to law school back in the day when tuition was only $12,000 a year. If you look at some of these same state schools today, tuition costs have tripled or quadrupled. Law school is no longer a safe or good investment for anyone, even the T14 students. Like I've said before, $150k debt is still $150k debt whether you go to Harvard Law or Cooley Law. Either way, if you don't end up in Biglaw and you have that much to pay back, you are basically screwed.

The guy who paid for his wife's engagement ring with his student loans is an idiot, but he should not be used as an example of the typical student loan victim. That's like using a few people who abuse the system to label everyone on welfare and food stamps as "welfare queens". We all know that is not the case, especially in this depression with nearly 20 million people out of work or underemployed. Contrary to what some well-to-do idiots in the beltway believe, these victims are not "spoiled brats' who are unemployed by choice. The same goes for most students who take out loans. They are not blowing their student loans on designer clothes and trips around the world. They are using it towards books and tuition. What kind of nation vilifies young people for getting an education? Maybe they are gullible to believe their school's employment statistics. But I don't believe someone is idiotic to invest in an education if they believe that it will open better opportunities than a high school graduate working at McDonald's.

And in all of this, one thing angers me more than anything: The thought of the government forgiving student loans. Actions have consequences, and the complaints of people with student loans that they deserve special treatment and sympathy because they have student loans strike a nerve. The state's legislature, in all its wisdom, has passed special loan forgiveness measures for people working for the government. Thankfully, in all its wisdom it is broke and has absolutely no funding for it. Another example of governments out of control.

I definitely have some resentment for people with huge student loans because they spend money like it comes easy (even when they're out of school). I sacrificed, I didn't go to ball games, I didn't eat out, I didn't do a lot of things they love to do. And I should be rewarded for that. My bitterness will grow if they were in some way able to weasel out of the responsibility for their spending habits.

Since a college degree is like a high school degree was to our grandparents, it is reasonable to believe that a graduate or professional degree is the ticket to better, well-paid job opportunities. For those of us who don't come from a rich family, we're damned if we don't get a higher education and we're damned if we do get an education using student loans. People need to stop blaming the students and start blaming the ABA for accrediting more law schools and school administrators who decide these outrageous tuition rates to pay their $300k yearly salary while blocking poor and middle class students from receiving an education without taking out six-figure loans. We want the same things this lawyer received less than a decade ago at a fraction of the cost. He got a break. The banks got a break. But our generation and the next generation of young people who only want an education and decent paying job are vilified as irresponsible by those before them who were privileged to receive a low cost education and good paying jobs?

But my ultimate point is this--people deserve to be rewarded for my sacrifices. For saving money, living frugally, for not taking on student loans. And I will be pissed off if the rules change because that makes me (and those like me) the sucker. That means I should have been doing what everyone else is. I should have been living it up on federal loans this whole time and then deferring payments.

I'm not saying I want people with student loans to suffer. I just want them to have to pay back what they've borrowed. And I want the government to stop making stupid loans for education. They are enabling all of these people.

But back on point, I'm not sure why anyone wants to go to law school. Maybe if you have a large scholarship. But at these prices, you have to realize that law schools are selling you a bill of goods. They are ripping you off.

I agree that law school is a huge ripoff and more prospective students should realize this with the proliferation of law scam blogs. I also agree that the government is enabling people because they have deals with their friends at the loan companies and for-profit schools. There are many arrogant 0Ls who believe they will beat the odds. But there are also many more students who blindly went to law school without warning believing that it would lead to a law firm, nonprofit, or government job. Most of the people my age have lived frugally, worked while in school, and received scholarships -- and they would not be in this position if schools were still charging $12k a year instead of $50k a year. Stop blaming the victim and be glad that you got out of school with so little debt. And have a little compassion for those of us who are unlucky to be part of a generation who was conned, fooled, and suckered into spending so much money on an education and graduating in a depression with no jobs.

23 comments:

  1. "I just want them to have to pay back what they've borrowed."

    O.K. Why don't you give me a job. E-mail me: newyorksolo@gmail.com.

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  2. Good post, and this kid is obviously an arrogant idiot. I, too, was fortunate to go to a T25 state school back when tuition was around $14K/year. I was able to graduate with only $45K in debt, and even more luckily, I graduated just in time to be able to consolidate all of my federal loans at a very low interest rate. I was also fortunate enough to enter the workforce before the great recession, and although I did not end up in big law, I still make a very good salary and am able to pay back loans.

    But, unlike this assclown, I have nothing but sympathy for more recent graduates. In addition to the worst economy in 3 generations, law school tuition has risen to staggering levels. My same school now charges north of 30K for IN STATE tuition. Unbelievable.

    Also, the "I did it right and therefore the government should not help out other people because it's unfair to me" argument is pure nonsense. If that is the case, then we might as well get rid of all social welfare programs. I mean, it's not my fault someone is a drug addict, so no more federal or state funds should be allocated to drug addition rehab. Right. Got it.

    And like you said, of course there were some law students who lived beyond their means -- just like every aspect of our society. But from my experience, the vast majority of law students were responsible borrowers and were caught in a bad situation. They deserve our help.

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  3. I agree with him about simply forgiving loans, but who's askig for that? What about being able to discharge them in bankruptcy after years of making good-faith payments on them, with no hope of ever being able to make enough money to pay them off in full?

    That's what I'd like to see the scambloggers put their energy into. Instead of trying to discourage 0L's from going to law school, how about working to change the law so that all the people who've already gone to law school have at least some future chance of getting out from under the debt?

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  4. I clicked on the link to the article.

    First of all, I can't believe that the unemployment rate for attorneys is only about 3%.

    They're probably counting the unemployed by definitions that work fine for the vast majority of job seekers out there, but not for attorneys. If I want to be a secretary, I actually have to be employed as a secretary. I can't make an office out of my house and self-employ myself as a secretary. If you actually look at the numbers behind the numerous attorneys who "gave up and started their own office," you're going to find a lot of people who did a couple of wills, took a couple of court appointed case, aided in a simple divorce (no children/no property of consequence), but are still considered employed for job hunting purposes.

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  5. This guy had it easier. Maybe he meant that law school was a dumb investment more than a decade ago, and that it is certainly a terrible decision now.

    However, this ass could have laid off painting all of us as irresponsible spendthrifts. This tactic is a favorite of ignorant 0Ls and industry apologists - just like the idiots who accuse me of going six-figures into debt when in fact I only took on another $37K for my TTT degree from Third Tier Drake.

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  6. In general, I'd probably agree with him (except for his characterizations of an imbecilic generation...well no I agree with him there).

    But could someone explain this to me? Everyone seemed to agree that the huge bank bailout was a moral hazard regardless of your political leanings. We had to justify it using the old favorite exitus acto probus---aka ends justify the means.


    Essentially the specter of what would happen if we didn't do it was too terrible to contemplate so we have to give this crippled horse running the race (ok bad example).

    So why not do the same for the students? Does having a large percentage, really a majority, of a whole generation in perpetual debt any worse for an economy than the prospect of bank failure?

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  7. I can see the public loving the idea of bailing out lawyers and doctors. That should be very popular.

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  8. I don't think anyone is talking about bailing anyone out. I think the proposal is to allow the students and the government guarantor to put the risk right back where it belongs: with the banks.

    Quite frankly, while the personal circumstances of my life being over sting quite a bit more than the reality that the federal government is going to end up paying on my loans when I don't, I'm actually pretty thoroughly outraged by the reality that the government continues to be defrauded by the student lenders. Just as the law schools' publication of intentionally misleading employment statistics has abused students to get them in the door and hooked up with loans, the lenders' deception in reporting default rates gets them government guarantees for the securities they issue on the back of student loan revenue streams. Effectively, it's a fraud, from top to bottom and from the bottom back up to the top. If you know even the basics about how this industry operates, there is no point at which you can simply say that the problem lies primarily with the students who were careless in their borrowing. If you look at the institutional incentives at each level, you start to realize that student lending is not "about" lending to students so that they can improve their station in life and become valuable contributors to society. It is about commoditizing students and creating a revenue stream - by any means possible, including fraudulently reported statistics - in order to be able to issue federally guaranteed securities.

    So, it seems to me that, now that you've promised to become ever increasingly "bitter" if the government "forgives" students on their loans, you don't really understand the first God damn thing about the issue. The unavoidable fact is that you have millions of students who took out loans who - despite the reality of abuse I have described above - would like nothing more than to "make good" on them. but, doing so would not be a simple question of "applying" oneself. We're not going to BE ABLE to ever pay back our loans because the primary objective of this whole scheme was never to make us able to pay them back. That was a secondary concern, if it was a concern at all. The tax payer will be on the hook, and so, the questions are simply these: whether you - purely out of spite and your better fortune - want unwitting participants to be condemned to a life of poverty; and whether you want yet more banks to be bailed out by the federal guarantee. Congress should pass a law now allowing for the discharge of student loans in bankruptcy and removing the federal government as guarantor for these fraudulent loans - yes, after the fact.

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  9. I don't think anyone is talking about bailing anyone out. I think the proposal is to allow the students and the government guarantor to put the risk right back where it belongs: with the banks.

    Quite frankly, while the personal circumstances of my life being over sting quite a bit more than the reality that the federal government is going to end up paying on my loans when I don't, I'm actually pretty thoroughly outraged by the reality that the government continues to be defrauded by the student lenders. Just as the law schools' publication of intentionally misleading employment statistics has abused students to get them in the door and hooked up with loans, the lenders' deception in reporting default rates gets them government guarantees for the securities they issue on the back of student loan revenue streams. Effectively, it's a fraud, from top to bottom and from the bottom back up to the top. If you know even the basics about how this industry operates, there is no point at which you can simply say that the problem lies primarily with the students who were careless in their borrowing. If you look at the institutional incentives at each level, you start to realize that student lending is not "about" lending to students so that they can improve their station in life and become valuable contributors to society. It is about commoditizing students and creating a revenue stream - by any means possible, including fraudulently reported statistics - in order to be able to issue federally guaranteed securities.

    So, it seems to me that, now that you've promised to become ever increasingly "bitter" if the government "forgives" students on their loans, you don't really understand the first God damn thing about the issue. The unavoidable fact is that you have millions of students who took out loans who - despite the reality of abuse I have described above - would like nothing more than to "make good" on them. but, doing so would not be a simple question of "applying" oneself. We're not going to BE ABLE to ever pay back our loans because the primary objective of this whole scheme was never to make us able to pay them back. That was a secondary concern, if it was a concern at all. The tax payer will be on the hook, and so, the questions are simply these: whether you - purely out of spite and your better fortune - want unwitting participants to be condemned to a life of poverty; and whether you want yet more banks to be bailed out by the federal guarantee. Congress should pass a law now allowing for the discharge of student loans in bankruptcy and removing the federal government as guarantor for these fraudulent loans - yes, after the fact.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The best thing the ABA and schools could do is turn law school into a 2 year program. The fact that you have to go for 80+ credit hours, but can fill that requirement with Law and Literature and Jurisprudence of Underwater Basket Weaving is retarded. Drop it to a two year program, but require more substantive classes to graduate.

    You have a third less tuition, an extra year of working, and one less year of acquiring interest while in school. Graduates would have more choice in what job to take. Fewer would stay at big firms, trying to drink themselves to death before being promoted to service partner.

    And most importantly, all these schools claim to care about public interest, pro bono, etc. Giving students a third less debt gives them the freedom to work low paying public interest jobs years earlier.

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  11. For what it's worth, I went to law school 10 or 15 years ago and ended up with a somewhat manageable amount of debt.

    The thing is, I didn't really do my homework -- I accepted my law school's claims that it had a very high placement rate. Which was indeed the case but it was foolish to just take their word for it.

    Anyway, Angel & Hardknocks, do you mind if I link to my web site in my posts? I am an attorney in New York and I'm actually looking for clients who are victims of the education loan madness.

    Thanks, Dave

    David Abrams
    299 Broadway Suite 1700
    New York, NY 10007
    212-897-5821 davidabramslaw at gmail
    attorney advertising

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  12. This woman comes across as a moron.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhgbCrtTui8&feature=player_embedded

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  13. I would be up for a 2 year education/1 year working in the clinic or in an internship, but I've come to the conclusion that schools don't do this because it annoys the alumni base and they are successful at hoodwinking the students into thinking that if they don't take nothing but bar courses, they will not pass the bar.

    Even though everybody becomes annoyed at low-income clients and pro bono work, I saw for myself that attorneys don't like anything that will eat into their client base. They had started a program where I live where the county was providing legal aid to pro se filers who needed help in filling out forms. This caused a minor uproar in the legal community (under a variety of pretenses that had nothing to do with loss of clients) and the program was discontinued.

    I can't imagine that legal aid clinics are met with open arms by this same coterie, although they probably endure them simply because legal clinics have screening measures to tell if somebody really doesn't have any money and whether their case fits a specific criteria. A pro se filer may actually have the money for an attorney, but may not want one for various reasons.

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  14. Nothing more than a variation of the oldest American motto: "I got mine, now f*ck off."

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  15. 11:42/11:43 pm:

    Outstanding post. I take a middle ground on the issue of loan repayment. As I tried to explain over at Legal Nihilist, my prediction-- and hope-- is that the pain of the loans will eventually be mitigated because of hyperinflation, discharge or other factors. However, the debtors will have to redeem themselves in other ways, as you are doing: analyzing and exposing the systemic fraud, and pushing for far-reaching legal and constitutional reforms to prevent these problems in the future.

    Best Regards,
    Whittaker
    ricercare2001/yahoo

    ReplyDelete
  16. "People need to stop blaming the students and start blaming the ABA for accrediting more law schools and school administrators who decide these outrageous tuition rates to pay their $300k yearly salary while blocking poor and middle class students from receiving an education without taking out six-figure loans."

    Amen.

    Students relied and still rely on the blatantly false statistics put out by law schools. I would not have gone to law school had my school not showed me its (fake) high employment rate and median salary for new graduates. Schools lie all day long to get students in the door and take their federal student loans.

    The feds are just as culpable for giving $40k a year in loans to anyone with a pulse for school, despite there being no jobs. When schools see that the government will back any and all prospective students, they continually raise their prices because they know Uncle Sam will keep putting up the cash.

    Law school is a racket, higher education in general is as well. The idea that every victim just needs to suffer in silence and let the scam continue to be perpetrated on future students is an outrage.

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  17. Eliminate law school. I learned all I needed to pass the bar in my review course anyway. That way, the kids (and other new licensees) could get started in practice without the crushing debt. Actually be able to rent a space and some furniture. Or are the firms (who own the Bar Associations)afraid of actually having newbies who might be able to compete with them, absent the crushing debt?

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  18. I went to law school on student loans, "blind" to the russian roulette that I was playing. Luckily, I graduated 10 years ago from a state school, only had $55k in loans, and was able to find a job in my low-cost area of the country with a large regional firm. I've cut the loans in half but am still paying on them (slowly since I was able to consolidate at 3%). While things worked out for me in the end (the market was a lot different when I got out), had I known the risk I was taking at the time I don't think I would have gone to law school.
    When I graduated, the bottom half of the class was basically screwed but the top half had decent job prospects . Now, if you aren't in very top 5-10% of your class at my alma matter, you simply don't have a job at graduation . . . going to law school in this environment is simply not worth it unless you have something lined up for you already or have a way to pay for school without loans

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  19. "The idea that every victim just needs to suffer in silence and let the scam continue to be perpetrated on future students is an outrage."

    I think this is an important point. People who have been victimized are often to ashamed to do anything about it. They often torture themselves over some small mistake they made; some small error in judgment, even though the person who victimized them is far more morally culpable.

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  20. I think you people are missing the point. The relevant point is, "do we want an America with undereducated people who reject advanced degrees due to financial rape, or do we want an America that wants its citizens to proceed with education as far as they can go?"

    Go to any guidance counselor's office in a high school--they will sell you a bill of goods that education is always profitable. Maybe that was true 30 years ago, but now it is just a business used to exploit the intelligent and ambitious. And as a country, unless we curtail free trade and the offshoring of jobs, we need educated people. But when the cost of the education exceeds its value, then how do we get there?

    The European model with free education and vigorous testing to qualify, seems the most rational to me.

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  21. Well said, Tax Attorney. I absolutely agree with you.

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  22. Free education will just bankrupt the state that much faster

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  23. Free education will bankrupt the state only if professors continue to be overpaid and underproductive.

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