Student Loans

Law School Success Stories: The Virtue of Thrift

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Last month, we solicited law school success stories from you, our readers. We’re often quite critical of law schools around these parts. So, to even out the scales a bit, we’re going to be running a series of happy stories, focused on graduates who are glad they went to law school.

We’ve tried to organize the success stories under a few broad themes, to lend some structure to the discussion. Some of the themes exist in tension with each other, and not all themes will apply to all readers. By the time the series is done, however, we hope that the stories will collectively shed some light on the question of whether one should go to law school.

Let’s launch into our first collection of law school success stories. They could be grouped under the theme of “go cheap, or go home”….

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Dreams Do Come True: You Can Pay Off Your Student Debts In Cash

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There’s a Canadian out there living the dream. He graduated from law school at the University of Toronto in 2009, during the heat of the recession.

But now, just three years later, he’s completely debt-free. A little while ago, he made his last debt payment of over $100,000, in cash.

Of course, he didn’t make that kind of money being a lawyer. There aren’t a lot of people who graduated in 2009 from law school who were able to pay off their debts through their work in law.

But I still consider Alex Kenjeev my hero. Slow rolls his debts, makes a bunch on money, then dumps bags of cash on the bank to leave him alone.

It could still happen….

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Green Acres: How To Get Away From It All (Including Your Student Loans)

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Ed. note: This post is by Will Meyerhofer, a former Sullivan & Cromwell attorney turned psychotherapist. He holds degrees from Harvard, NYU Law, and The Hunter College School of Social Work, and he blogs at The People’s Therapist. His new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist, is available on Amazon, as is his previous book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy (affiliate links).

Remember Green Acres, that fish-out-of-water comedy wherein Eddie Albert drags Eva Gabor out to live on some tumbledown farm in the middle of nowhere? She’s a Park Avenue socialite, but he’s the husband and the penis-haver and it’s the 1960′s — so what he says, goes. If he’s jonesing for fresh air and farm living, she has no choice.

I don’t remember much more than the theme song and opening credits, but the concept — giving it all up, packing your bags and fleeing for the sticks, spouse (and maybe kids) in hand — resonates with my lawyer clients. Some are beginning to sound like aspiring Eddie Alberts.

I’d like to say there’s a great lawyer return to the land on the way — driven by a love for nature and the outdoors. To some extent that’s true. But mostly, it’s a product of desperation. The big themes are escaping Biglaw misery, seeking adventure, looking for a healthier lifestyle… and fleeing school loans. One client’s story weaves these themes into a magical tapestry of personal growth, spiritual awakening, and debt avoidance.

He was suffering modestly at a Biglaw firm in L.A. Then he got posted to an office in Asia, where he happened to speak the language. There he discovered how bad bad can be. The U.S. office dished out standard-issue Biglaw brutality. Nothing could have prepared him for the Asia office. The cruelties committed by the local staff and attorneys would make Hieronymus Bosch wince. In their laser-beam-like focus on punishing my client for speaking their language and attempting to work in their homeland, they achieved new plateau of sadism on a weekly basis. He developed insomnia, migraines, then panic attacks — and was fired a year later, without comment.

That’s when the Green Acres theme began playing in his head….

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Rutgers Law Dean Offers Nonsensical Response To Transparency Criticism

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On Friday, we reported on an aggressive and arguably misleading sales pitch from the people at Rutgers Law – Camden. The pitch, aimed towards students who had taken the GMAT, made this claim (among others): “As a direct result of the quality of legal education at Rutgers, of those employed nine months after graduation, 90% were employed in the legal field and 90% were in full time positions.” The school was clearly trying to make the economic case for going to law school, something you don’t see as much of in this difficult economy — at least from schools willing to tell the full story of their employment outcomes.

We wondered whether Rutgers was being as forthright as it could with its potential students. Over at Inside the Law School Scam, Professor Paul Campos took a closer look at the Rutgers numbers, and not surprisingly he found them to be highly suspect. Law School Transparency also shed more light on how Rutgers cooked up these numbers, and they went so far as to call for the resignation of the school’s associate dean of enrollment, Camille Andrews, who sent out the recruitment letter.

If you thought Rutgers Law Dean Rayman Solomon was going to throw Dean Andrews under the bus for this adventure in advertising, you haven’t been paying attention to how the law school game is played. Dean Solomon has come out in defense of his school’s recruitment materials.

I’m not entirely sure about the meaning of what he said, but there were definitely words involved…

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Morning Docket: 05.22.12

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* Yesterday marked day two of jury deliberations without a verdict in the John Edwards campaign-finance violations trial. The former presidential candidate says he’s “doing OK,” but you know he’s secretly pissing his pants over going to prison. [ABC News]

* Martin Weisberg, a former Baker & McKenzie partner, pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. He faces up to 15 years for both crimes. Like he wasn’t earning enough as a Biglaw partner. [New York Law Journal]

* A judge told two fashion houses to leave it on the runway, and not in the courtroom, but that’s not going to stop Gucci from collecting its due. Guess owes the company $4.66M for trademark infringement. [Bloomberg]

* If you’re wondering what you’re going to have to do to get your student loans discharged in bankruptcy, it’s really quite simple. Get diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, and you’ll be set. [National Law Journal]

* What’s the difference between looted art and art looted by the Nazis? The Hitler part. Proposed art legislation will ban all museum recovery claims, except those of families affected by the Holocaust. [New York Times]

* “”I can’t believe f**king Allred called you!” In a total attention whore battle royale, Okorie Okorocha has sued Gloria Allred for allegedly stealing both of his clients in the John Travolta gay sex scandal. [CNN]

Law School Sales Pitch Doubles Down On The ‘Getting Rich’ Rationale For Law School

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We talk a lot about the value of a law degree, but one thing most people seem to agree about is that a law degree isn’t very useful unless you want to be a lawyer. The people who go to law school because they think it is the doorway to riches and wealth are often the ones most sorely disappointed.

Well, unless they go get a JD/MBA at Rutgers Camden. ‘Cause, you know, that’s where you go if you just want to make straight bank.

At least, that’s the impression you’d get if you had received this Rutgers Law sales pitch….

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Should You Drop Out of Law School? An ATL Debate

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'I'm ending my 1L year with a B-minus average. What's the point in going on?'

Lat here. Your Above the Law editors occasionally receive requests for advice from readers, to which we sometimes respond. Back in March, for example, Elie Mystal and I debated the merits of Harvard Law School versus Yale Law School, for the benefit of a prospective law student choosing between these two fine institutions. In case you’re wondering, he’s going to Yale.

(The future Yalie explained his decision this way: “I didn’t want to take the chance that even if I worked harder at HLS, I could still be ranked below enough outstanding students to not impress a professor, land a good clerkship, etc. I also got the impression that this risk-averse mentality was what drove many people who were on the fence between YLS and HLS to eventually choose YLS.”)

Choosing between Harvard and Yale is a high-class problem. Today we look at a situation that we’ve addressed before, in 2010 and 2011, and that continues to confront our readers. The question presented: If you do poorly in law school, should you cut your losses and drop out? Or should you keep on trucking and collect that J.D. degree?

We have two fact patterns. One involves a 1L, and one involves a 2L. Let’s hear them out, shall we?

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Quote of the Day: The House That Debt Built (And Then Destroyed)

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It’s like I bought a house, and I burned it to the ground. And I’m still paying for it. I burned the house to the ground, and I’m still paying my mortgage.

– Attorney Jessica Ramm, explaining the difficulty of surviving while paying off thousands of dollars in law school student loan debt every month.

Morning Docket: 05.07.12

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Not the alleged hot-dog hooker.

* While Dewey’s former culture gets roasted on a spit, and the seemingly unending drama gets turned into a montage of living lawyer jokes, we’re still waiting for the final punchline. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal]

* Don Verrilli tried so hard, and got so far (depending on who you ask), but in the end, it doesn’t even matter. When Linkin Park lyrics apply to your oral argument skills, you know you’re kind of screwed. [New York Times]

* The 9/11 arraignments went off without a hitch this weekend. And by that, we mean that it was a 13 hour hearing filled multiple interruptions, and grandstanding about “appropriate” courtroom fashion. [Fox News]

* In a “re-re-reversal,” Judge Jerry Smith, on a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit, reinstated Planned Parenthood’s injunction against Texas without even so much as a homework assignment. [Dallas Observer]

* The It Gets Worse Project: if you thought that the Law School Transparency debt figures were scary before, then take a look at them now. Six figures of debt just got a lot harder to swallow. [National Law Journal]

* Scalia gets busted on a case of hot-dog hooking. No, not that Scalia. A woman from Long Island has been accused, for the second time, of selling swallowing foot-longs in the back of her food truck. [New York Post]

Non-Sequiturs: 05.02.12

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* There is a difference between being “insensitive” and being wrong. It’s more important and less obvious than you might think. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Is it harder to go to college in America today if you are a minority — or if you are poor? [Forbes]

* I live in Oakland, so I’m more surprised when a day goes by that I don’t see someone with marijuana sticking out of their pants. [Legal Juice]

* The finalists in the ABA Battle of the Bands sound pretty darn good. My vote will probably to go to Jenner & Block partner Joe Bisceglia rocking out to some old Chicago blues. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Uggs just won a $686 million judgment against counterfeiters. But for some reason, after years of asking every woman I know, no one has been able to explain to me why people insist on wearing them when it is more than 25 degrees outside. I just don’t understand the appeal. [Fashionista]

* It seems like NYU Law really doesn’t want to give up all of its employment data. Reminds me of playing “keep away” when I was seven, and specifically how the game always ended in shouting matches and damaged egos. [Law School Transparency]

* In other ping pong related news… [DealBreaker]

Quote of the Day: And This Makes Us Feel Better How?

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Portrait of a young president... still buried in loans?

When we graduated from college and law school, we had a mountain of debt. When we married, we got poor together. We only finished paying off our loans, check this out: I’m the president of the United States. … We only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago. That wasn’t that long ago.

– Barack Obama, speaking to college students in North Carolina on Tuesday. The President will turn 51 in August.

Dear Abby: My Kid’s Law School Loans Are Ruining My Life

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Here’s an unsurprising newsflash: young people have student loan debt, old people have student loan debt, and they have no idea what to do about it. With student loan debt having surpassed the one-trillion-dollar mark, we’ve officially reached a point where the media is calling this the crisis du jour.

We’ve discussed the dangers of incurring student loan debt time and time again throughout these pages, but it seems that people still don’t get it. They’d like some more — hmm, how shall we put this? — “sage” advice. They’d prefer to publish their woes for all to see on “the most popular and widely syndicated column in the world.”

They’ve chosen to go to Dear Abby for the answers….

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