Law Schools

Law Schools Should Ask Applicants How They Will Pay For Their Law School Expenses

Perhaps disclaimers should be placed in law school applications about the burdens and consequences of student loans.

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Law schools get a bad rap for their role in perpetuating the student debt crisis. And law schools probably deserve a lot of the blame for why many recent law school graduates borrowed unbelievable sums of money that they have little chance of paying back.  Indeed, law schools routinely inflated employment statics, sold prospective students on a fleeting promise of a fat paycheck, and took other ingenuous steps to fill their classes with students who would borrow their way to a law degree.  Law schools usually just see law students as profit centers, and many do not care if students need to borrow unbelievable sums to finance their legal educations.

However, some law schools do care about how much debt individuals will borrow to finish their legal educations.  As I previously mentioned, some law schools offer need-based financial aid to minimize the amount of debt students need to borrow to earn their degrees, and a few law schools offer accelerated programs and other initiatives to decrease the amount of money a student needs to borrow to earn a law degree.  Some law schools even specifically ask students how they will pay for law school during interviews with prospective students.

I can attest to this from first-hand experience.  When I was about to graduate from college, I was on the waitlist for Washington and Lee University School of Law.  I later transferred to Georgetown Law after my first year of law school, but as a senior in college, I really wanted to attend W&L Law.  In order to demonstrate my interest in the school, I agreed to be interviewed by the director of admissions at W&L Law.  Most of the interview was what you would expect, and I spent a lot of the interview playing up my extracurricular activities, which were weirdly important to me at the time.

However, the admissions officer asked me a number of questions about how I would pay for law school.  This caught me by surprise, since I thought that only my academic and personal records would be relevant to being accepted to law school.  However, it was clear to me that the admissions officer was asking me these questions more for my own benefit so that I could really think about the cost and process to finance my legal education.  I told the admissions officer that I planned on debt-financing my law school education, but that I had little debt from college, and would potentially participate in ROTC cover my law school expenses.  This explanation seemed to satisfy the admissions office, and I was eventually admitted to W&L Law, although I transferred to Georgetown Law the next year.  Asking me these questions got me thinking about educational costs in a way that I had never thought about before.

I think additional law schools should follow this model, and care more about how prospective students will finance their legal educations.  When you are a college student applying to law schools, you are not usually thinking about how much it costs to earn a law degree.  Indeed, even though you might fill out forms for financial aid and to borrow loans, you never see that money, and it is hard to understand how figures on a page can have a real-world impact on your life.  Talking about finances with law school admissions personnel can have a positive impact on how one understands the burdens of borrowing student debt.

I think all law school admissions officers should ask more about student debt in interviews with prospective students.  And perhaps disclaimers should even be placed in law school applications about the burdens and consequences of student loans.  Many college students likely do not have anyone in their lives who could provide information about student loans, or guide them through a thought process about the consequences of debt-financing a legal education.  This is especially true for individuals who are first-generation students, since they are even less likely to have someone in their lives who can help them think about what it means to finance a law degree.

Of course, the purpose of asking questions about student loans during law school interviews should not be about determining someone’s eligibility for admission.  It would be dangerous and unfair for law schools to make admissions decisions based on financial needs, since this would prejudice lower-income individuals.  Everyone should have the free choice to attend any school to which they are accepted, regardless of how much money they need to borrow to pay for law school expenses.  Making admissions decisions based on financial need would likely lead to a less-diverse student body.

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Law schools can play a vital role in educating prospective students about student loans and helping prospective students think about how they will pay for law school.  As I can attest to from first-hand experience, having a law school admissions officer question how I would pay for law school really made me think of student loans in a way I had never before done.  Of course, law schools might scare aware applicants by being up front about the incredible cost of earning a law degree, but law schools can nevertheless play an important role in helping prospective students understand the burdens of student loans.

Jordan RothmanJordan 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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