This is Part II of a response to a reader. Paying
for law school begins with good planning. And by good planning I mean having
rich parents. Because that’s the only way you’ll pull it off without borrowing
a ton of money.
(A note: some people don’t like talking about money
because they feel it is in bad taste. If that’s you, quit reading now)
Take Harvard Law for example:
That’s just for one year. Law school is three years
long, so break out your calculators. Don’t forget the annual tuition increases,
and the 7% that compounds DAILY. Thanks to the handy cost of attendance
calculator on Georgetown’s website, I can now calculate exactly how much a
debt-financed Ivy League education costs.
That’s a little over a quarter million dollars.
How exactly can anyone pay that off? The short
answer is that the job prospects are very good at HLS, as new associates make
$160,000 a year at the large law firms.
The alternative is the Low Income Protection Plan (“LIPP”),
which basically pays off all your loans if you decide to be a poor person. The
program works on a sliding scale: if you make less than $45,000 a year then you
pay nothing on your loans, and as your income increases so do your payment obligations.
One way or another, after 10 years the loans are paid off.
This is a fantastic dilemma to be placed in: do I
want to go work for a firm, and make more in a year than my family did during
my entire time in high school? Or do I want to take an incredibly interesting
public interest job, and still not worry about money?
If you have any suggestions, please put them below!
I think your blog is really funny and great. I think the whole point of the blog is fun and interesting. BUT (you knew there was a but coming). The reason people think talking about money is tacky is because it is. You never actually talked about how to finance your education you just said HEY IT'S SUPER EXPENSIVE TO GO TO HARVARD. Then proceeded to say you can have an amazingly fulfilling career for free or get it all paid for and have a rewarding career. Cry me a river? I think most people realize if they get into Harvard Law they can finance the loans somehow.
ReplyDelete"This is a fantastic dilemma to be placed in: do I want to go work for a firm, and make more in a year than my family did during my entire time in high school? Or do I want to take an incredibly interesting public interest job, and still not worry about money?"
Is it a fantastic dilemma? Sounds like a blessing to me. I hope you don't lose to much sleep over fantasizing how amazing your life will be. Love your blog but you're sounding like a twat here.
P.S. Your jizz bank story was great.
Thanks for reading, and I'm glad that you enjoy the blog! I think your criticism is valid and probably shared by more than a few, which is why I included the warning.
DeleteBut I am writing a blog about going to Harvard Law school. On a certain level, that's just a pretentious thing to do. I can't changed that. But that's what's happening
The point of this blog is to let people know what the experience is like, and part of that experience is feeling incredibly fortunate and blessed.
As for your substantive point about financing: they give you the loans, and either: 1) you pay them off with your absurd salary, or 2) Harvard pays them off with their immense endowment.
As someone who is out in the job market (albeit, without a Harvard law degree), I can attest to how incredibly difficult a public interest job is to find. Or any job, really...
ReplyDeleteAre the stats that much different for Harvard grads? I've never looked.
About 90% of HLS grads get jobs straight out. Mostly big-law, clerkships, and gov positions. About 5% get "business" jobs, which could mean anything from being a barista to working with McKinsey. The other 5% are unemployed. There's a more detailed breakdown on lawschooltransparency.com.
DeleteBut those averages mask a lot of regional differences. If you're willing to go anywhere, you can probably get any kind of job. If, like me, you are focusing on very small regional market (Arkansas), you have to be flexible in what kind of work you're willing to accept.
If you cared about regional ties, why didn't you take a full ride at U of Arkansas and just dominated your class there? If their 68th place ranking turned you off, why not Alabama, Georgia, or Vanderbilt?
DeleteThose schools are cheaper, would have given you scholarship money, and have better placement in Arkansas than Harvard. You set your sights on Harvard and this is what you get.
Was it difficult to get approved for all these loans?
ReplyDeleteNope! The feds will give you loans as long as you don't have adverse credit history. If you have good history, or none, then you're good to go. You'll only get dinged if you have black marks on your credit history. If you think you may, make sure to contest those.
DeleteYou shouldn't be complaining at all. There are two issues with your post:
ReplyDelete1) You chose to attend Harvard Law. You wanted the prestige and the name, so you get the price tag as well. Assuredly, you could have parlayed your 3.8+ GPA and 175+ LSAT to a full ride at nearly any school on the planet, but you chose Harvard. You knew the costs going in; you still went with the expensive option.
2) You can pay off that debt in less than five years. Harvard is a breeding ground for firm slaves that get paid an arm and a leg to live at the office. These jobs sound super awesome, right? Wrong. But it's what people must do to pay off the debt that accompanies the decision illustrated in the first part above. Take the job at Cravath or Sullivan and Cromwell, punch the timeclock, and get your check. Pay the loan companies. Continue until out of debt. It's quite simple.
Stop complaining about things that aren't problems. If you wanted to do "interesting public service work," then you should have taken a full ride. Go whine somewhere else.
I don't take advice from crazy cat ladies.
ReplyDeleteWrong. I did discover this blog through that exchange, but I assure you I am not that person. But my question is still valid: why choose Harvard over a full ride somewhere else, knowing that Harvard places into biglaw instead of public interest?
DeleteThat anon option is pretty convenient, huh?
DeleteEven though I don't believe that you are not that person (it doesn't really matter anyway), your comment illustrates a common misconception about Harvard Law that I would like to clear up. For the sake of an analysis that is relevant to me, I'll compare Harvard Law to the University of Arkansas Law School. All data comes from lawschooltransparency.com, by way of the ABA.
ReplyDeleteThe first year out of law school, HLS places 11.4% of its graduates in public interest jobs. UA places 12.1% of its graduates in similar jobs. During that same first year out, HLS places 22% of its graduates in judicial clerkships, while UA only places 4.6%. So while straight out public interest placement is about even, the long-term placement of clerks into public interest jobs makes it likely that HLS places an even higher % of students into public interest jobs.
But if the job outcome is about the same, why go to HLS where the debt is much higher? The answer is, of course, that the HLS LIPP plan eliminates debt considerations. All else equal, my financial situation coming out of HLS into a public interest job would be on par with a UA graduate in a similar job placement.
But all things aren't equal.
As an HLS student, I get serious consideration for any job that I apply to in AR. That's not necessarily true if I had gone to UA. If finances aren't a factor, why wouldn't I up my odds of getting a job?
Furthermore, it is a conceit of youth to pretend to know, 3 years in advance, what you will want to do. HLS places nearly 50% of its class in firm jobs that pay $160,000 a year, while UA places less than 5% in similar jobs. By hedging my bets, I am able to pursue public interest jobs that interest me, while knowing that I can always fall back on a biglaw firm job. That would not have been possible if I had gone to the UA.
Take this from someone who used to work a public interest job - it's easy to burn out really, really quickly doing that, so have a contingency plan. It's not the same kind of burnout people experience have, say, billing 80 hours a week at Big Law, but there's a common misconception that public interest jobs are an "easy" route to go (I'm not saying that this is your perception, but I hear it a lot). When I was doing public interest law, I was doing more legally complicated work than many of my peers, but I was having to build every aspect of my cases pretty much on my own, I didn't have a secretary, and the administrative work was tremendous.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying this to discourage you - I wouldn't trade my experience doing public interest law for anything. Pursue your bliss, be happy, and just remember that you'll very much be earning that loan forgiveness :)