Law Schools

Don't Feel Bad If Your Parents Paid For Your Legal Education

Everyone has visible or hidden advantages that might be even more valuable than being debt-free.

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I had an interesting conversation with some lawyer friends of mine recently. At a get-together I attended a few weeks ago, some of the attorneys I was with started to talk about our firms, life as a lawyer, and a few other topics.  The conversation eventually turned to student loans. Since most attorneys are burdened with student debt, this is usually a good discussion topic when conversing with lawyers!

After chatting about some student debt refinancing options, one of the attorneys in my group asked what refinancing was. This lawyer also didn’t seem to know anything about income-based repayment plans. I asked my friend if he had any student loans, and after taking a few seconds to respond, he conveyed that his parents paid for his legal education. This attorney seemed really uncomfortable conveying this fact, and I got the sense that he might have been a little embarrassed admitting that he did not pay for law school on his own.

I felt bad for my friend, and related that it was totally fine that his parents paid for his law school expenses. Indeed, I conveyed that everyone has their own burdens in life, and it is unfair to judge people who had their parents pay for their educational costs.

After looking over the dozens of articles I have already written about student loans, I realized that I have not yet published an article directed toward individuals who do not have student debt. In any case, I wanted to tell people who had their parents pay for their law school expenses that they do not need to feel embarrassed about their financial situation.

Individuals who had their parents pay for their legal education should not feel uncomfortable, because everyone has different advantages in life. It is of course true that starting one’s career without six figures of crushing student loan debt is a great benefit that provides many people a “leg up” when building their careers.

However, everyone has visible or hidden advantages that might be even more valuable than being debt-free. If you look at your own personal situation, I am sure that you can find advantages that you have that others do not. In the end, we all have varying capabilities, benefits, and other situations that make our life experiences different from one another, so it is impossible to judge someone who had their parents pay for their law school expenses. As such, people who did not need to debt-finance law school have no reason to feel bad. In fact, they might be worse off than many individuals who have student loans!

Another reason why people should not feel uncomfortable about having their parents pay for their legal education is that not borrowing student debt could even negatively impact your life. Of course, without student loans it might be hard to build credit, learn financial responsibility, and develop a number of other useful life skills. However, not having student loans can impact how successful you are in life as well.

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I receive many interesting emails from readers of this column, and one of the most fascinating messages I received was from a parent who paid for his child’s law school education. This individual told me that their child dropped out of the legal profession and stopped working altogether, and he believed that this might have been due to the fact that his child did not pay for law school. It is impossible to know what your life would have been like if you did not have student loans, so individuals without debt do not need to feel bad that their parents paid for their education. Indeed, their lives could actually be worse off than if they borrowed money to attend law school.

Furthermore, having law school debt gives someone certain opportunities that you would not have if your parents paid for your law school expenses. For instance, having student loans connects individuals to other people in our generation, since student debt is a thread that connects many millennials with a common narrative. If you never had student loans, you cannot participate in conversations, gripe with others, or otherwise relate to many people around you. In addition, having student loans and paying them off allows someone to build a compelling narrative that will earn you respect with many people. Furthermore, people who eventually pay off student loans will experience a level of satisfaction that will never be realized by individuals who had their parents pay for law school. As such, if you had your parents pay for legal education, you should not be embarrassed by your financial situation, since you will not be able to realize these advantages.

In the end, having parents pay for your law school expenses is a serious benefit that might make other people feel bitter toward you. As such, I can understand why people who had parents pay for their legal education might be uncomfortable or a little embarrassed when admitting that they did not need to borrow student loans.

However, we all have different advantages in life, and individuals who do not have student debt will never realize some benefits involved with borrowing student loans. As such, there is no reason to feel uncomfortable if your parents paid for your legal education.

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Jordan Rothman is the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a personal finance website discussing how he paid off all $197,890.20 of his college and law school student loans over 46 months of his late 20s. You can reach him at Jordan@studentdebtdiaries.com.

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