Most people who graduate law school end up with a huge amount of debt. A common critique of choosing a career in public interest law is that because public interest jobs don't pay as well as private sector ones, paying off student loans will take far too long, and the time spent shoveling out of this financial hole is too great a personal sacrifice. "I'll just spend a couple of years working at a law firm until I pay off my loans, then I'll get back into public service work," many law students say, though it's unclear how many follow through on this promise. Other law students and new attorneys scoff at the idea of working in the relatively lower-earning public sector altogether.
But for those of us who really want to do public service work, debt — while certainly a concern — should not be a deterrent. Many programs exist to encourage law students to serve the public interest, by helping to ease the financial pressure. Law schools do this through Loan Repayment Assistance Programs. (See a list of LRAPs here.) And Congress has gotten into the game as well, by passing the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007. This fantastic law provides loan forgiveness for graduates who choose a public interest career if they meet certain requirements. To be considered for loan forgiveness under the CCRAA, an attorney must maintain public interest employment for ten years; consolidate her federal loans; and choose income-based repayment of those loans. The law should spark curiosity in public interest-minded law students who didn't believe it would be possible to crawl out of debt. Two sites do a great job explaining the law: Equal Justice Works and IBRinfo. The U.S. Department of Education's official document explaining the CCRAA is here.
Choosing public interest law as a career does not necessarily mean a lifetime of debt.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Square One: What are We Doing Here?
Why would any sane person choose a career in public interest law?
First, the legal job market is horrendous. Many of the large law firms that once enticed second-year law students through summer courtships have either cut way back on hiring or stopped altogether, and have stopped sending recruiters to law schools for fall on-campus interviews. The effects of the recession-induced hiring pinch have forced graduates from top-tier schools like Harvard and Yale to step out of their usual job markets, and into smaller ones normally safe for graduates of lower-ranked law schools. Even those graduates who are lucky enough to land a job as an associate at a "Big Law" firm, with a starting salary of up to $160,000 a year, have had to wait 12 to 18 months before starting their jobs. In the interim, these associates have settled for unpaid internships with governments and non-profit organizations, sometimes subsidized (at a lower wage) by the law firms that hired them but can't afford for them to start just yet. Still other graduates who still hope to land a Big Law job eventually have instead resorted to finding a public sector job until law firms resume their normal hiring practices (if, of course, these firms ever do).
Second, law school itself is a pain, and an expensive one. A typical student at a first-tier law school can expect to have six figures of debt at graduation, and students at top schools may dig themselves a financial hole more than $200,000 deep. Five years ago, when the job market remained favorable, such an investment made far more sense. Now, a law school applicant must consider the possibility that even as a young attorney with two (or more) degrees and a bar license under her belt, she could face significant periods of under- or unemployment while harboring six figures of debt. Then there is law school itself. The old cliché — the first year, they scare you to death; the second year, they work you to death; and the third year, they bore you to death — will not strike most law graduates as too far from the mark. Many law professors pride themselves on the Socratic method, singling out first-year students, asking them unanswerable questions, and embarrassing them in front of their peers by forcing them to stammer through what will surely be a wrong answer. In the second year, those students who join law journals can expect a year full of drudgery (perhaps good practice for life as a Big Law firm associate), editing the work of law professors too famous and too busy cranking out articles to care if their work is cited, let alone readable. And in the third year, law students will again write tuition checks to their law schools while, if they're lucky, spending most of their time doing unpaid work for legal professionals eager to take advantage of the free labor. These 3Ls will spend much of the rest of their time writing papers for classes that won't matter in their professional careers, job hunting, and wondering how in the world — after three years of paying for and trudging through law school — they will afford to spend $3,000 on a bar prep course, let alone push through the 10 hellish weeks that ends with the bar exam.
Why? Why would any sane person engage in such self-destructive, confidence-crushing, bankruptcy-inducing behavior? Isn't choosing law school today a tenuous bet at best, and downright irresponsible at worst?
Well, maybe. But also, maybe not. Some who have taken the route will surely pelt an otherwise optimistic law school applicant with cynicism, telling her that law is not the profession it used to be and anyway, she can't make it in today's legal job market. The road is too hard, too expensive, too depressing even to begin.
This blog proposes another possibility, an alternative answer to this cynical view. Law school and the legal job market are ripe with problems, to be sure. But if a law school applicant aspires to practice law because she hopes to make a difference in someone else's life, because she sees legal education as a way of sharpening her own potential to find solutions to difficult problems, and because she believes that lawyers — by way of their logical approach and persuasive abilities — are better suited than others to lead society, then she should do it. Such a person will find great rewards in a career of public interest law.
What, then, is public interest law? It is a career that allows one to use his or her legal education and experience to help people and solve problems in such a way that the primary reward is not financial. Perhaps this means working as a judge, law clerk, prosecutor, public defender, court-appointed defense attorney, or legal aid attorney. Perhaps it means shaping policy on Capitol Hill, or in a state legislature. Perhaps it means serving underprivileged communities at a not-for-profit organization. Or perhaps it means working at a law firm while devoting countless (non-billable) hours to pro bono causes.
The goal of this blog is to help people who desire a career in public interest law find their path, and find one another. This site, maintained by a group of passionate, optimistic, public service-oriented attorneys, will feature content and resources that, we hope, will make it easier for law students and attorneys like us to connect. Perhaps it will even lead to the formation of new social networks, business ventures, or non-profit organizations. But at the very least, we hope it will help aspiring students and attorneys to make more informed choices about entering what can be an enormously satisfying line of work.
First, the legal job market is horrendous. Many of the large law firms that once enticed second-year law students through summer courtships have either cut way back on hiring or stopped altogether, and have stopped sending recruiters to law schools for fall on-campus interviews. The effects of the recession-induced hiring pinch have forced graduates from top-tier schools like Harvard and Yale to step out of their usual job markets, and into smaller ones normally safe for graduates of lower-ranked law schools. Even those graduates who are lucky enough to land a job as an associate at a "Big Law" firm, with a starting salary of up to $160,000 a year, have had to wait 12 to 18 months before starting their jobs. In the interim, these associates have settled for unpaid internships with governments and non-profit organizations, sometimes subsidized (at a lower wage) by the law firms that hired them but can't afford for them to start just yet. Still other graduates who still hope to land a Big Law job eventually have instead resorted to finding a public sector job until law firms resume their normal hiring practices (if, of course, these firms ever do).
Second, law school itself is a pain, and an expensive one. A typical student at a first-tier law school can expect to have six figures of debt at graduation, and students at top schools may dig themselves a financial hole more than $200,000 deep. Five years ago, when the job market remained favorable, such an investment made far more sense. Now, a law school applicant must consider the possibility that even as a young attorney with two (or more) degrees and a bar license under her belt, she could face significant periods of under- or unemployment while harboring six figures of debt. Then there is law school itself. The old cliché — the first year, they scare you to death; the second year, they work you to death; and the third year, they bore you to death — will not strike most law graduates as too far from the mark. Many law professors pride themselves on the Socratic method, singling out first-year students, asking them unanswerable questions, and embarrassing them in front of their peers by forcing them to stammer through what will surely be a wrong answer. In the second year, those students who join law journals can expect a year full of drudgery (perhaps good practice for life as a Big Law firm associate), editing the work of law professors too famous and too busy cranking out articles to care if their work is cited, let alone readable. And in the third year, law students will again write tuition checks to their law schools while, if they're lucky, spending most of their time doing unpaid work for legal professionals eager to take advantage of the free labor. These 3Ls will spend much of the rest of their time writing papers for classes that won't matter in their professional careers, job hunting, and wondering how in the world — after three years of paying for and trudging through law school — they will afford to spend $3,000 on a bar prep course, let alone push through the 10 hellish weeks that ends with the bar exam.
Why? Why would any sane person engage in such self-destructive, confidence-crushing, bankruptcy-inducing behavior? Isn't choosing law school today a tenuous bet at best, and downright irresponsible at worst?
Well, maybe. But also, maybe not. Some who have taken the route will surely pelt an otherwise optimistic law school applicant with cynicism, telling her that law is not the profession it used to be and anyway, she can't make it in today's legal job market. The road is too hard, too expensive, too depressing even to begin.
This blog proposes another possibility, an alternative answer to this cynical view. Law school and the legal job market are ripe with problems, to be sure. But if a law school applicant aspires to practice law because she hopes to make a difference in someone else's life, because she sees legal education as a way of sharpening her own potential to find solutions to difficult problems, and because she believes that lawyers — by way of their logical approach and persuasive abilities — are better suited than others to lead society, then she should do it. Such a person will find great rewards in a career of public interest law.
What, then, is public interest law? It is a career that allows one to use his or her legal education and experience to help people and solve problems in such a way that the primary reward is not financial. Perhaps this means working as a judge, law clerk, prosecutor, public defender, court-appointed defense attorney, or legal aid attorney. Perhaps it means shaping policy on Capitol Hill, or in a state legislature. Perhaps it means serving underprivileged communities at a not-for-profit organization. Or perhaps it means working at a law firm while devoting countless (non-billable) hours to pro bono causes.
The goal of this blog is to help people who desire a career in public interest law find their path, and find one another. This site, maintained by a group of passionate, optimistic, public service-oriented attorneys, will feature content and resources that, we hope, will make it easier for law students and attorneys like us to connect. Perhaps it will even lead to the formation of new social networks, business ventures, or non-profit organizations. But at the very least, we hope it will help aspiring students and attorneys to make more informed choices about entering what can be an enormously satisfying line of work.
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