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I'm sorry, I posted this in another forum, but thought this one would be more appropriate. If there're any mods out there, feel free to delete the first in the Law School FAQ forum.

I was wondering if anyone had created an Excel spreadsheet for loan repayment, over the course of X amount of years in Big Law. If not that, does anyone know where I can find information on not just 1st year annual salary, but 2nd/3rd/4th etc. for big firms, in not just NYC but DC and other cities as well?

It would mean a lot, truly.

Thanks!

I have a detailed spreadsheet for my own potential debt. I would share it, but it's not exactly user friendly - I'll work on it and see what I can come up with.

That said, based on in-state tuition and the average big law salary in my region, my debt would be completely paid off in about a year and a half, so I'm not sure the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year salaries are that important.

GM544 wrote:I have a detailed spreadsheet for my own potential debt. I would share it, but it's not exactly user friendly - I'll work on it and see what I can come up with.

That said, based on in-state tuition and the average big law salary in my region, my debt would be completely paid off in about a year and a half, so I'm not sure the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year salaries are that important.

Sounds like a solid situation, all the best, really.

I'm up to see anything, so if you're willing please don't hesitate to send it over (as messy as you think it might be, it's still tremendously helpful for me!). If you do take some time to polish it, that's fine, too. Anything's great!

I hope this is helpful. I fixed some of my formulas and added a rough estimate for taxes, which changed my estimate to more like 2.5 years in big law.

Here's the spreadsheet:

http://www.filedropper.com/paymentplancalculator_1

Instructions:

1) Choose the sheet that applies to your school (semester or quarter)
2) Enter your total COA after scholarships, savings, help from parents, etc (the total you will have to finance)
3) Enter a potential salary and corresponding tax rate
4) Adjust the length of the loan to find an acceptable balance between length of loan and monthly take-home pay (AFTER taxes)
NOTE - You should try several different salary ranges, consider worst case scenarios, etc.

Resources:

To estimate the tax bracket for a given salary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_bracket
To estimate probability of a given salary after graduating from your school: http://employmentsummary.abaquestionnaire.org/ and http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Dow ... l_2013.pdf

Acknowledged issues:

*This is based on continuously compounding interest, which I've recently learned, may not be correct.
*I remain unclear on whether interest capitalizes while you are in school. This assumes that it does.
*The tax bracket leads to a very rough estimate. Some educational expenses are tax deductible, though I don't know if that makes a significant difference.
*This does not take into account the best payback option which is that you would pay the minimum on your lowest interest loans and as much as you can afford on your highest interest loan until all are paid off. This calculates payments for each loan type individually, based on your desired pay off date. I could maybe fix this if I thought about it for a while - I'll work on it.

I'm sure there are plenty of other problems I haven't thought of yet so feel free to make suggestions!