Graduate Of Elite Law School Forced To Live Off Welfare Due To Terrible State Of Job Market

Which law school left this woman penniless and destitute?

Law school has been a wild ride for recent graduates since the beginning of the recession. Would-be lawyers’ employment woes have been chronicled in detail in almost every major publication since 2011, when the New York Times focused on the grim job prospects that awaited people after law school graduation.

This was not the case for all law school graduates, though. Those who were lucky enough to graduate from top-flight law schools often found themselves with jobs at large law firms. If graduates of the so-called “T14,” the upper echelon of law schools, somehow found themselves hopeless and jobless, their schools were quick to create public interest fellowship programs that would employ and pay them for a time. When those jobs ended, they were left to fend for themselves and struggle like the rest of their peers. Some graduates of superior law schools have continued to struggle for years after not being able to get their footing following the conclusion of their school-funded jobs.

Can you imagine what it must be like for one of these people to pass multiple bar exams and be unable to hold down a job? Can you imagine what it must be like to be a degree-holder from a prestigious law school drowning in so much debt that you’ve been forced to apply for food stamps and receive public assistance?

This is exactly what happened to a recent graduate of one of the best law schools in the country…

We’ve written about lawyers who were welfare recipients before — like this fellow who graduated from Northeastern Law, and this woman who graduated from Pepperdine Law — but never before have we encountered such an elite recipient of public assistance. This woman’s story is shocking.

Meet Danielle Owens. She’s a 2010 graduate of Georgetown Law. This was how we were first introduced:

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We immediately reached out to Owens to find out what her story was. How could a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center wind up in such a predicament? In an exclusive interview with Above the Law, Owens recounted the troubling narrative of transitioning from a life without loans to a life living under the weight of hundreds of thousands of dollars of law school-related debt, despite the fact that she received full-tuition scholarships for both her undergraduate and law school degrees. This is her tragic tale:

Staci Zaretsky of Above the Law: Why did you choose to go to law school?

Danielle Owens: When I started undergraduate, I wanted to be a pediatrician. Even though I did well in my classes, I quickly discovered that it wasn’t the path for me. I was a sociology major and I took a class called the Sociological Aspects of Health and Illness. In that class, I figured out that I was way more interested in advocating for the rights of low-income and under-served populations on an individual level and changing our nation’s health care delivery system and policies than actually practicing medicine. So, I decided to pursue a JD/MPH.

SZ: How much law school debt do you have?

DO: I got a full scholarship to Emory, so I have zero undergraduate debt. Despite getting a full-tuition scholarship to Georgetown and living in a slightly sketchy apartment complex close to campus, I took out $65,108 for living expenses. My MPH program gives limited financial aid, so I took out the full cost of attendance, $66,662.

As I was pursuing my degrees, life also happened. By way of brief explanation, I was raised an only child by my mother (the only surviving child) and maternal grandmother, with my father also taking on an active role. My mother passed away in Spring 2006, during my senior year of college and just prior to my law school matriculation. As I was pursuing my degrees, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, my father passed away, and I dealt with a few bouts of depression, resulting in me taking out an additional $16,025 to finish up my MPH coursework and capstone project.

I have since consolidated my loans, which are currently in an unemployment deferment. All totaled, I owe $204,789.02 in federal loans. I also owe approximately $12,000 for a private bar loan. That loan is in collections because I have not been able to make a payment since February 2014.

SZ: How many jobs have you applied to since you graduated?

DO: At least 200. That’s definitely a low-ball estimate based on the records that I kept of the jobs that I applied to when I was receiving unemployment benefits. It doesn’t include any of my job hunting efforts before I was deemed eligible for unemployment benefits in July 2012, or when I was marginally employed afterwards but still job hunting.

SZ: How many interviews have you received since you graduated?

DO: Sixteen interviews since law school graduation.

This is the world that we now live in — a world where a graduate of a world-class institution applies to hundreds of jobs, but receives only 16 interviews over the course of four years. It’s easy to see why so many downtrodden law school graduates have tried to dissuade others from following in their footsteps.

SZ: How many jobs have you held since you graduated?

DO: I have had 5 jobs since I graduated, not including non-legal temp work. I had a 6-month transition to legal practice fellowship sponsored by my law school at a local legal aid organization. I spent 11 months in an Am Law 100 law firm’s discovery center as a project attorney. I worked as a contract attorney doing mobile residential real estate closings for 8 months until refinance rates began increasing and the work disappeared. Since then, I have worked as a law assistant to a solo family law practitioner and as a document reviewer for a national legal services outsourcing firm.

SZ: How many jobs do you have right now, if any? Are any of those jobs law-related?

DO: My document review project ended the last Friday in September. I’m currently unemployed. I did, however, recently participate in a teaser for a reality show following the personal and professional lives of young Atlanta attorneys.

SZ: How much money do you have coming in each month?

DO: Since my document review project ended, I have no monthly income. At this point, I’m living off loans from loved ones.

A legal education has left this woman penniless and destitute, all because she was trying to better herself to help others. Is this how we reward our best and brightest — the people who sought nothing but the ability to make the world a better place? Sadly, the answer to that question is yes.

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How did Danielle Owens wind up on food stamps? How does she feel about the fact that law school led her down this path of heartache and hardship? Flip to the next page to find out….