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.

Leaving the Country Is Not a Desperate Act

I wanted to thank Angry Future Expat for playing Ann Landers to a BIDER reader (we'll call this person B.R.) who needed some advice on their loans and job prospects overseas. I sent the reader a response of my own in a private email, but I thought Angry Future Expat would have a better answer (he did) in response to the worst case scenario for not paying off private loans. I recommend stopping by and reading B.R.'s letter and AFEP's response.

AFEP is absolutely correct in that leaving the country is not a desperate act, but a smart one and, as AFEP said, " a profound and powerful act of civil disobedience". It is more than okay to feel angry about your current situation whether you are an unemployed recent graduate, a person laid off after years of loyalty and hard work to your former employer, someone drowning in student loan debt because you thought an education would open doors to something better than a minimum wage job, or the millions of people who are currently unemployed or losing business because of a man-made disaster like the Gulf Oil Spill. You have every right to not follow the status quo, say enough is enough, and just leave the abuse that our current system has inflicted upon you.

If B.R. decides to stay, at least understand and accept that your situation will likely not improve within the next decade. It is not due to any fault of your own, but because we are only at the beginning of a very long great depression and no one in the upper echelons of power cares about you or me to change the system that made them incredibly wealthy. Holding out hope for non-existent jobs or any loan forgiveness or economic assistance from corporatist-runned higher education system and government would be foolish. By reading our blogs and writing to me and AFEP that you aren't going to sit by another year unemployed after working your butt off for your BA and JD, you are doing something courageous. Something that most people in your situation havn't even considered. You are taking charge of your life and taking it wherever in the world you can find a livable wage, a lower cost of living, possibly a national health care system, and an escape from your own self-destruction forced upon you by people and corporations that could give a damn what happens to your life as long as your continue to benefit its coffers.

I came across a magnificent and profound piece of writing by blogger Arthur Silber. His post, appropriately titled "Memo to the Victims: You Yourselves Will Pay for the Crimes of the Ruling Class", mainly addresses the Gulf Coast oil spill victims, but I think it applies to every single one of us. Especially for the scambloggers who have been met with some derision and scorn. As long as the ridicule and criticism comes from the powers that be and their apologists who make their six or seven-figure salary off the backs of millions of unsuspecting young people, we're doing something right. I've quoted much of Silber's post below, but I recommend reading the entire thing and forwarding it to anyone you know who has been affected by the Gulf oil spill, which is pretty much all of us. Ask yourself if this is the way you want to live and if not what are you going to do about it to break the goddamned rules, as Silber says. Only your life and happiness are at stake.

As more and more people are now acknowledging -- and I think they are entirely correct and, if anything, still underestimating what will be the ultimate costs of this calamity -- the damage caused by the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico will most likely be felt for several decades at least. The economic costs forbid accurate projection at this point; that might not be an altogether regrettable result, for a fuller version of the truth might well be so horrifying that it would induce paralysis of both thought and action. The human costs -- the livelihoods destroyed, the families subjected to unendurable stress and most probably similarly destroyed in very large numbers, the hopes and dreams put on indefinite hold, only to be surrendered in their totality in time -- prohibit contemplation.

One aspect of the profoundly evil system that has been destroying us for over a hundred years -- and make no mistake, it is deeply evil in design, intent and effect, if by evil we designate those actions which destroy the very possibility of thriving life -- is especially awful. The authoritarian-corporatist-militarist system victimizes untold millions of individual human beings, as well as many other forms of life as we see again today, both here and abroad. That would be a momentous evil in itself, but this particular evil is unsatisfied with only this first form of destruction.

Thus, the victims are targeted a second time, and they are forced to become collaborators in their own destruction. It is crucial to understand that these two forms of destruction are not separate manifestations of separate evils. They are the consequences of the same evil, and the two forms of lingering torture and death (psychologically at a minimum, and frequently existentially as well) are part of one overall design. I've discussed certain cultural-psychological manifestations of this dynamic in a number of essays. For an introduction to this analytic approach, I would recommend one article in particular: "Let the Victims Speak." As I stated at the outset of that essay, the nature and operation of this dynamic are very complex; it took me a few decades to appreciate its character. If the subject interests you, I therefore suggest a reading of the earlier article in its entirety.
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You may be grievously harmed and even permanently damaged by the actions of those who hold unanswerable power -- but you may only speak about this evil and its effects within the very narrow limits set by those who would destroy you. If you are killed, the identical prohibitions apply to those who still manage to survive and who would protest the unforgivable crime committed against you. In this manner, the complacency and comfort of those who possess immense power and wealth are underwritten by the silence forced upon their victims. The victims may speak and even protest, but only within severely circumscribed limits, and only so long as their rulers are not made to feel too uncomfortable, or too guilty. Anything which approaches too close to the truth is strictly forbidden.

This is the system of government carefully erected and fortified in the United States over the last century. In the last several decades, it has been made impregnable and unassailable. If you tell the full truth or even approach it, you are consigned to the void beyond the most distant borders of permissible debate.

I consider this only a start at the task of understanding this pattern and its operations; time and health permitting, I will address these complicated matters in more detail in the future. But I now want you to consider another aspect of this collaboration in their own destruction forced upon the victims.

The pattern is the same: the victims are forced to participate in their own destruction. If you participate in our authoritarian-corporatist-militarist system in any significant way, there is no way of escaping this dilemma. I repeat the point for emphasis: this is the way the system was designed. The events of the last decade in particular and the events of today -- the acceptance of torture as a "normal" method of state- and warcraft, endless criminal wars of aggression, genocide, the funneling of vast amounts of wealth from defenseless "ordinary" citizens to the already engorged ruling class, the destruction of the Gulf and a huge additional number of lives -- are not aberrations, the result of the system having gone awry. This is what the system is designed to do. Most people recoil from evil of this magnitude; they refuse to identify and accept the system for what it is. They still seek to "reform" or "save" it. In other words: they themselves seek rationalizations and justification for their continuing collaboration. The ruling class is many things: avaricious, consumed by lust for power and control, heedless and uncaring of the immense destruction they cause, provided the destruction never touches their lives. But the ruling class is emphatically not stupid. To state what would be painfully obvious, if only so many people were not so wedded to denial: they constitute the ruling class, and you do not. And they counted on your reluctance or outright refusal to identify their evil. They knew they could depend on your continued collaboration in your own drawn-out torture and death.
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I'm forced to admit that, if one were to consider this system from the perspective of its greatest beneficiaries, it is a goddamned beautiful thing. It is elegant. The government takes gobs of money from taxpayers, it shovels huge amounts of that money to already enormously powerful companies, those companies then provide services essential to the government's unending campaigns of widespread destruction and death -- and in the necessary course of providing those services, the companies themselves commit numerous "egregious" and "willful" violations of health and safety requirements (all documented by Turse), and the companies thus inflict enormous suffering on some of the same taxpayers.

Then, in a display of our rulers' magnificently bountiful kindness and thoughtfulness, some of those injuries -- just some of them, for how can many of the victims ever be made close to whole again in any meaningful way? -- will be compensated, using a small portion of the huge wealth made possible by the taxpayers in the first instance.

As I say: elegant.

And this is merely one example, if an especially heinous one, from one industry. How many times in how many industries is this identical pattern repeated every single bloody and blood-filled day? Countless times, in countless industries.

This is what the system is designed to do. It does it with astonishing efficiency. Short of civil disobedience on a huge, unrelenting scale, that is, short of widespread, unceasing non-cooperation, the system will continue for the foreseeable future, probably in roughly its current form for the rest of your life. There is no sign that non-cooperation on the required scale will occur or is even being contemplated, except by a few outliers like me. And, possibly, like a few of you.

So what are you going to do? Scream at the injustice? Yell about the monstrous evil being committed every hour of every day? Write another blog post? I do not exempt myself from the all-encompassing irony which now consumes us, amidst the rising torrent of blood.

But: Withdraw your support, if you choose to. Disobey. Break the goddamned rules. Do not cooperate. If a sufficient number of people chose that course, change might begin.

Consider it. I suppose not all that much is at stake -- only your soul, and your happiness.

Angry Future Expat Explains Why You Should Run Away From Your Debt

Trolls who stop by our blog often blame students for taking out loans to get an education rather than the institutions and banks that allow 17-year-olds to take out hundreds of thousands in private loans without their parents' consent. I have already stated my opinion on this. Education should be low cost or free for academically gifted students. Citibank, Sallie Mae, Access Group, and the higher education scam are doing whatever they can to prevent this from ever happening. They use propaganda, cry foul, and play the blame game every time another tragic story surfaces to keep us from being united against fighting these companies. One of our readers said it perfectly:

Housing bubble crashes? Blame the poor folks who got scammed by the banks and are losing their homes.

Youth unemployment? Blame them for not having gone to college.

College grad underemployment and student indebtedness crisis? Blame them for
a) pursuing a major that you don't like,
b) going to a more expensive or higher-ranked school than the one you attended,
c) having the gall to believe they can achieve a higher material situation than their parents just by working hard and doing everything right (why do they feel so 'entitled' to be compensated for their efforts?).

Every time the mainstream media airs these very real problems, people jump to play the blame game.

For those of you who can no longer afford your loan payments or refuse to spend your entire life giving half of your salary to pay off your education expenses, The Angry Future Expat lays out a clear and compelling case against paying back your debt.

The simple fact is that, with the exception of a couple people who had their notes cancelled by the courts due to fraud, bad faith, a lack of standing, or other misconduct, no mortgage holder anywhere in the United States have ever received a government bailout. Period.

Rather, bailouts are all about protecting creditors, or the bondholders of creditors, by protecting their payment stream. For example, Fannie and Freddie’s exist to buy up so-called “conforming” mortgages, and then they securitize them and sell them to large institutional investors, such as pension funds, university endowments, etc. These investors are not, however, true investors because they are not adopting the risk of default. If a large group of mortgages in the securitization pool default, i.e. the people stop making the payment, the investors still get paid.

Now, the mortgage holder (homedebtor, “homeowner,” whatever you want to call them) still loses the house. Same with student loans, the securitized student loan is guaranteed by the government, so when the grad school grad can’t make the payments, it doesn’t matter to the “investor.” But the graduate still goes into default, has their wages garnished, gets hit with tens of thousands in fees and collection costs, and has to leave the county to have any chance of a normal life.

The bailouts are a one-way ratchet in favor of the creditors. They do not help the debtor at all – in fact because everything is guaranteed, it creates a perverse incentive for banks and finance companies to push ever-increasing levels of leverage (aka debt) onto those too stupid, too young, too desperate, or too optimistic to really understand what their getting themselves into.

Read the entire post here.

A Must Read Letter

A BIDER fan sent in a letter that is a must read. If this was made into a youtube video it would likely go viral because this person tells some uncomfortable truths about our education system and the state of the nation. I'm sorry that so many of our readers had a horrible school and job search experience after wasting so much money. Good luck and YES definitely think about leaving the country because you deserve better than living at home unemployed for the next decade. There are volunteering and teaching programs in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe that cover health care, housing, and airfare. Look into it!

Dear Angel, Hardknocks, and BIDER readers,

I did not go to law school. I received my Masters degree last year and have been unable to find a full time job. I live with my parents and work temp jobs when I can find them. I am seriously considering moving to another country as Angel and Hardknocks have suggested. The United States will unlikely recover from years of corporate and political corruption and mismanagement that continues to this day. Your JD or Ph.D will not change the damage that has been done to our country's infrastructure and it will not get you a job. I want to advise any college student reading this to take Angel and Hardknocks seriously when they tell you not to attend law school. Also think twice about getting a graduate degree in most disiplines. Maybe you will be unemployed for a while but it is better to be an unemployed college graduate than an unemployed JD or Ph.D after spending countless years in school with $200000+ in loans to pay back.

I have agreed with Hardknocks that education is important in the development of one's mind and understanding of the world. However, higher education has become a Ponzi scheme. It is no longer about educating students but about stealing as much money the universities can get away with charging to pay for unnecessary renovations and give their employees corporate wages all in the name of profits, fake prestige, and US News & World Report rankings. It is a business as corrupt as Goldman Sachs and the so-called academics who make corporate sized salaries have the same amount of sympathy for their victims as Bernie Madoff. I was astonished at how little the administration at my school cared about the student body. They did not take the job search seriously enough and career services has not extended their hand to help the majority of last year's grads find jobs. This is just my personal experience but after reading the law scam blogs this type of attitude seems to be common with administrators and deans at most graduate schools. The money they make is a crime when they know so many of their students will end up jobless and with crushing debt. How can they live with a clear conscience? It's dispicable.

Everything from campus news to the career fair is a public relations stunt. I heard from other students that the employers at our career fair were there only as a favor to career services. They were not serious about giving anyone a job. Most of my classmates did not find a job through the career fair. We were angered that we had wasted our time and money to buy a new suit and print out a hundred resumes only to hear the same thing over and over again: "We're not hiring." So why are you here? Career services had their cameras ready and bragged in a blog post with photos and video about how so many employers came to the career fair. They forgot to mention that no one ended up with a job offer.

I personally cannot wait for the tuition bubble to burst and some of these schools close down for good. Only then will these deans and adminstrators feel what it is like to be unemployed. Or will they purchase a more powerful marketing team to fool the next generation of students? The education industrial complex and the media have successfully brainwashed middle class parents and students at a young age to be ashamed of occupations that use one's hands or don't require an advanced degree. They push students to go to college and ignore signs that some students would do better off as a plumber or electrician. I would love to have one of those jobs right now.

The law school scam movement is one of the few grassroots movements to take on the education industrial complex. College students should feel lucky to have this resource on the web. Those of us several years older did not get honest advise and now our dreams have been destroyed because we chose to further our education. When I listen to politicians and businessmen giving commencement speeches about the importance of an education and doing good in the world, I only hear lies and hypocrisy. These are the criminals who stole money from taxpayers, caused irreversible environmental and economic disasters, continue to send our young men and women to kill and be killed in foreign lands, and have never helped a poor soul in their life unless it's for a photo op. It's sickening but this too is part of the university's publicity stunt.

Don't make the same mistake we did and don't allow these crooks to take any more of our money. They have destroyed an entire generation. The skeptics and non-believers who criticize the law school scam movement should watch their backs because any one of you can be out of a job tomorrow. There is a thin line between the middle class and poverty for most Americans.

In Solidarity,
A Victim

The National Jurist Calls Law Students Greedy for Wanting High Paying Jobs, Takes Aim at “Disenchanted” Bloggers

The editor-in-chief of the pro-industry legal magazine, The National Jurist, chose to use his soapbox to wag his tiny finger at greedy, wealth-seeking law students rather than hold accountable the greedy and really wealthy deans and student loan industry. Quelle surprise!

For too long, many of the students who entered law school were seeking the high paying salaries that law schools were too happy to advertise. It was a rush to greed. And many of these wealth-seekers were sorely disappointed when they failed to land the $160,000 job.

Most never even had a chance, as only 20 percent of all graduates were landing jobs with salaries greater than $100,000. But, to be fair, some even failed to land the $40,000 job and now have $100,000 in debt breathing down their necks.

But the larger point is that law schools became filled with too many students who were more focused on a good return on their investment. We now have several blogs feeding this disenchantment. But buyer’s remorse does not get us very far.

Shame on those students for getting accepted into law school and wanting a job after spending over $100,000 and three years of their lives on a legal education! This is as far as The National Jurist is willing to go to explain why the legal industry is coming apart at the seams. Why? Because abusers would rather place blame on their victims than look in the mirror. It’s those greedy students who are causing the oversaturation in the legal market, say the abusers. They did this to themselves. Never mind the ABA who continues to accredit schools. Forget about examining the law schools and deans who charge insane tuition rates to pay themselves upwards of $500,000 each year. Don’t even bother being critical of the biglaw sweatshops, the shitlaw outsourcing, or the private student loan industry. The magazine would lose advertising if they went after the real criminals in this sad story; so they took the easy route and took aim instead at the unemployed graduates and law school scam bloggers who are only guilty of providing an outlet for unemployed lawyers and to warn prospective law students of the side of legal work that rarely gets reported by the mainstream media. L4L lays down the cold, hard truth for the editor-in-chief of The National Jurist in his latest post, Good Times. Go check it out now.

Newsflash: as cliché as it sounds, some of us went to law school to make a difference working in public interest or the government. Some of us were truly interested in learning the law and maybe we foolishly thought going to law school would teach us how to be lawyers. Some of us want a decent paying job simply to pay off our six-figure student debt and make a life for ourselves since most of us are unemployable outside of the legal industry. Our frequent commenter Jadz explains how the current legal market has affected lawyers in all areas from biglaw to public interest work:

Another interesting aspect of this problem (that is hitting like a ton of bricks at the TT school where I work, which historically places a plurality of its grads in gov't or public interest) is that the Biglaw deferral stipends are causing mass unemployment among new grads who actually intended to pursue public interest work as their career, rather than as "something to do" while they waited for their seats at Biglaw. I wonder what is going to happen to those folks? I think we are looking at a lost generation in every sector of what's left of the legal economy.

Gasp! How dare Jadz place blame on biglaw rather than those naive public interest students who thought they could get a job in the public sector right after graduation? During a time when many T14 graduates can't even find jobs, why is The National Jurist blaming students for being greedy? Law graduates are making as little as $10/hour with "Craigslist firms" and $20 an hour in NYC doing doc review. Many of our readers have stated that they would be happy with a $30,000 secretarial job. If that's greed then what do you call the deans and professors who make six-figures working eight hour weeks knowing that the students they teach will graduate with life destroying debt and no job prospects? Business as usual? What really hit me about The National Jurist article was its sheer lack of humanity, not an iota of sympathy for students who just had the bad fortune of graduating at the worst possible time. Students are paying for the greed and bad investments made by law schools, the ABA, biglaw, and the business class. They have every right to be disenchanted with a system that has destroyed their futures and probably those of their children as well.

I'd like to conclude with a comment I found on Big Debt, Small Law:

When a devil who controls lawland and greatly profits from it at the expense of the masses in society and in lawland has the nerve to chastise anyone who wants a good return on their foolish law school investment….well…..that just goes way, way beyond the pale…..even for a devil. How dare such a money grubbing and money thieving snake criticize law students for wanting profitable return on their investment. How dare a devil who profits from the scam known as the billable hour scam wax poetic about morals or anything else for that matter.


Know this lawland lemmings: To the devils who control lawland, most of you are useless mud people not worthy of even semi-humane treatment or payment. Cut your losses and leave law now. Leave it to the devils and watch the scam that is law imploded upon them.