Public Interest

States Are Looking To Bolster Their LRAPs

A pair of states seek to improve the funding of their state-administered loan repayment programs for public interest lawyers.

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I’ve written before that my primary piece of advice for aspiring public interest lawyers is to avoid debt. Recall that the median starting salary for a legal aid lawyer is around $43,000, the median debt for law graduates is around $140,000, and the result is that, absent some form of assistance, the median legal aid lawyer would pay almost half her salary to repay law school loans.

Thankfully, there are some forms of assistance out there for median legal aid lawyer types.

One of the most common forms of assistance is Loan Repayment Assistance Programs, or LRAPs. In a post last winter, I discussed how a few schools have really robust LRAPs that effectively eliminate debt for public interest lawyers, but beyond those few schools, LRAPs really vary in how much help they provide to how many people.

But one thing I haven’t written about before is state-administered LRAPs.

Twenty-three states plus the District of Columbia host LRAPs for public interest lawyers. As with law schools’ programs, these LRAPs vary significantly in scope. Some are very small and their benefits are limited — for example, in 2013, Arizona’s program covered six people receiving an average award of $967. Others provide quite a bit of money to quite a few people — in 2013, Illinois’s program covered twenty-six people receiving an average award of $10,000. You can find details on which states have LRAPs and the scope of each program here.

As you can imagine, funding these programs is not always easy. Nevertheless, the reason I’m writing about state LRAPs this week is that two states are currently taking steps to find additional funding for their programs.

In the case of California, “additional funding” means funding beyond the zero dollars currently allocated to its LRAP. California has had an LRAP program on the books for years, but it’s never been funded. Now, though, State Senator Robert Hertzberg is shepherding a bill that would take the modest step of adding “an option to donate to the Public Interest Attorney Loan Repayment Program” to attorneys’ bar dues forms. With over 250,000 attorneys in California, that modest step could easily result in a robust program. Hertzberg’s bill passed the California Senate unanimously and now moves over to the Assembly.

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The other state looking to bolster its program is Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has had an active program for a while — in 2010, it provided 81 people with an average award of $4,330. But the state funds its program solely through pro hac vice fees, and according to the Legal Intelligencer, revenue from pro hac admissions has been declining in recent years. The solution? Raise pro hac fees from $200 to $375. The hike is expected to bring in over a quarter million additional dollars per year.

And this additional funding is much needed. The salary and debt numbers for public interest lawyers in Pennsylvania are not far off from the numbers I laid out in the first paragraph above: according to the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (via the Legal Intelligencer), “the average salary of the 105 legal aid attorneys receiving the assistance this year is $50,457, and their average outstanding student loan debt is $125,582.” Assuming 6.8% interest and a ten-year repayment term, monthly payments on that debt load would be $1,445 — about a third of those legal aid attorneys’ average gross monthly income.

So kudos to California and Pennsylvania for shoring up their LRAPs, and to all those other states scrounging up funding to help public interest lawyers defray educational costs. (If you’re interested, you can see a table of state LRAPs’ funding sources here.)

More importantly, though, if you’re an aspiring public interest lawyer with a mounting debt load, take a look at this list and consider practicing in a state that will help you pay off your law school loans — it could save you some $10,000 per year.

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Sam Wright is a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. If you have ideas, questions, kudos, or complaints about his column or public interest law in general, send him an email at PublicInterestATL@gmail.com.

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