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[Anonymous User]

Estimated $160k with scholarship I got going in (had the mentality of getting a $160k job and not wanting my loan amount to be more than starting salary). Looks like I'll end with just over $100K - landed some more scholarships/grants in law school being a TA in the business school and a position in a dorm for undergrads. That is, Unless I take a bar loan this summer to pay off a higher interest loan from UG. Job pays 145k w/ lock step, where market is 105k. So I'm going to try to pay this down in ~2 years, quicker if some other stuff pans out. We'll see.

[abl]

Debt is a huge factor in job enjoyment. It's easier to like a job that nets you $8k a month and you can quit at any time. It's a little harder when you're paying $4k in loans and you know you can't afford to work anywhere else.

But we were talking about this in relation to loan assistance programs. Although I imagine there are folks who join the NRDC and realize after a couple of years that the organization isn't their cup of tea, I suspect that relatively few people both leave their PI employer and start a job that is not assistance-eligible. How many PI people take ineligible jobs during their first ten years post-graduation? I'd wager that number is pretty darn small.

With respect to private sector employment, I think your example highlights the extreme end of things: the difference between being $300,000 in debt and being $0 in debt can be a substantial factor in job enjoyment and job flexibility. Much as law school prestige can open and close doors, so too can debt. And just as a student deciding between Stanford and Santa Clara should be cognizant of the many doors that going to Stanford will open, a student deciding to attend a school at $0 debt versus at $300,000 in debt to work in the private sector should understand that their debt will be a limiting factor on their enjoyment of their job (and to some extent on their ability to find a new job).

We should be clear, though: just about nobody really ends up choosing between Stanford and Santa Clara. And just about nobody really ends up choosing between $0 in debt and $300,000 in debt. It gets much more difficult to evaluate the limiting impact of law school prestige when we get into the range of Michigan vs USC, for example--and it gets much more difficult to evaluate the limiting impact of debt when we get into the range of $200,000 vs $100,000 in debt.

Debt is a powerful factor in post-graduation happiness and therefore should be an important consideration in law school decisions. But it is not the only factor or the most important consideration. And, the correct answer will almost never be "go to the law school that will offer you as little debt on graduation as possible."

[Anonymous User]

A law professor told me that the long-term attrition rate was like 90% (so 90% of JD holders don't stay in the law)...dunno if that's true, but given that I'm just a midlevel and I've already seen a relatively high attrition rate, it wouldn't surprise me.

I think getting into $300k debt for a chance at a job that may be what you wanted (unlikely - because a lot of PI jobs require grunt work as well) is an awfully big price to pay.

There's no way that's remotely true for the T14. I'd bet that 90% of T14-graduates don't stay in their initial (narrowly defined) legal track--e.g., biglaw for the most part. But I'd be surprised if the vast majority of T14 grads don't remain in at the very least JD-preferred jobs for their entire careers.

Also, you make this weird implication that people want to do PI work because they don't want to work hard. That's obviously not true. I think this is related to a strange attitude that pervades law in general -- that somehow because you have a JD, you shouldn't have to any of the more crummy work generally delegated to entry level employees. Well, entry level lawyers, just like entry level everyone else, sometimes get grunt work assignments.

Finally, sure, there's grunt work in most legal jobs, especially in the first couple of years--even in "unicorn" jobs. That doesn't mean that all legal jobs are equally as (un)rewarding or that someone doing elite-level PI is even nearly as likely to be dissatisfied as someone doing biglaw. Your attitude seems to be "you're probably going to dislike whatever you do in the law, so you might as well take as little as debt as possible." If that's really a major factor influencing your decision between two schools, you probably shouldn't be going to law school to begin with.

To be fair, most people who went to law school probably don't like their jobs and probably shouldn't have gone in the first place, let alone take out $300k debt for it. There's a reason why law ranks in the top 3 careers for dissatisfaction. The odds are against you.

Debt is a huge factor in job enjoyment. It's easier to like a job that nets you $8k a month and you can quit at any time. It's a little harder when you're paying $4k in loans and you know you can't afford to work anywhere else.

True. But I think it's also the nature of the profession as well as a lot of these dissatisfaction studies focus on old boomers who didn't have that much debt.