Law Schools

Other Professionals Don't Understand The Student Loan Situations Of Most Lawyers

Why? Because law schools lied to incoming students and the Great Recession brought doom and gloom to the legal profession.

By  
on

I receive a number of emails each week from readers of my column here and my website Student Debt Diaries.  And feel free to reach out to me with any questions or comments you might have!  Predictably, many of the people who communicate with me are lawyers or individuals who eventually want to become lawyers.  This makes sense, since most of my articles are focused on issues facing the legal industry.

I also receive a number of emails from other professionals, including dentists, veterinarians, and doctors.  Above the Law should be happy to know that their content is appealing to a wide variety of professionals!  Most of the time, other professionals reach out to me to tell me their own student debt stories, and it has been interesting to learn the experiences of so many people.

I recently received an email from a dentist who conveyed his disdain for lawyers who complain about student debt.  This dentist told me that he borrowed a large sum of money to attend dental school and worked hard to pay off his student loans all by himself.  This dentist believes that attorneys who have issues with their student debt have no one to blame but themselves, since they knew what they were doing when they borrowed student loans and have the power to pay off this debt.

As someone who sacrificed much to pay off his student loans, I have much sympathy with this sentiment. And in a perfect world in which information is unbiased, and people have complete agency over their situations, individuals would have no one to blame but themselves for problems with student debt.  However, the legal industry is unique, and it unfair to compare debt-burdened lawyers with other professionals who borrowed money to earn their degrees.

For instance, many law students were fed bad information when they decided to borrow student loans.  For years, law schools inflated employment statistics, such that this data suggested that law students would be able to easily land a job that would allow them to pay off their student loans.  If you think law school is an easy way to earn a fat paycheck and put your financial house in order, then of course you are more likely to borrow massive amounts of student loans.

As we all have come to understand, the information that was provided to many prospective law students was flawed.  Many law schools selected only a sample of their graduating classes when compiling data, and numerous institutions played other games with their employment statistics.  In reality, far fewer law school graduates were able to obtain gainful employment than had been advertised by many law schools.

This situation was not present in many other industries.  Indeed, there is no accusation that medical schools, dental schools, or other professional institutions fudged employment data like law schools did.  As a result, it is unfair for people in other professions to judge lawyers about student debt, since lawyers borrowed student loans in an environment that was much different than other professions.

Sponsored

Furthermore, the institutions charged with regulating the legal industry and protecting prospective lawyers failed to do their jobs over the past decade.  The American Bar Association allowed lower-tier law schools (including for-profit and somewhat shady institutions) to proliferate and admit pretty much any candidate who had taken the LSAT.  These institutions charged students insane amounts of money to attend law school even though the students had little chance of passing the bar or obtaining gainful employment.  Although the American Bar Association has tightened standards in recent years, this organization could have done better for a long period of time, and thousands of individuals were impacted.

There is no claim that the governing bodies of other professions failed to regulate medical schools, dental schools, or other institutions.  Indeed, it is notoriously difficult to be admitted into an American medical or dental school, and this has benefited individuals in those professions.  Since the legal industry has had poor oversight, it is unfair to compare the student debt situations of lawyers with other professionals.

In addition, lawyers were much more affected by the Great Recession than many other professionals.  Indeed, many doctors and other professions did not experience much financial effect from the Great Recession, since their businesses are not really impacted by the economic climate.  However, numerous law firms were greatly impacted by the Great Recession, and many conducted layoffs in ways that had never been seen before.  In fact, the Great Recession has changed the way numerous law firms conduct business even until this day.  Many older lawyers still regale younger attorneys with stories of how things were before 2008.  Since many lawyers have faced financial issues over the past decade that other professionals did not experience, it is unfair to judge lawyers based on the student loan standards of other professions.

In the end, there are many things one can do to improve their student debt situation, and people have much power over student loan burdens.  However, it is difficult to compare the student loan burdens of lawyers with issues faced by other professionals.

Sponsored

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 [email protected].

Topics

, ,