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What non-legal jobs are good to apply for with a JD (especially with the feds)?

Damn, reading fail.

My uncle runs a company that handles annuities and estate planning and has a JD. Then again, all you need for that is the proper certs.

One of my friends has a finance UG and an M.S. in criminal justice and works for the Department of Defense as a contract specialist for the Air Force. He said a number of new law grads are working there - starts at 48k with a 3 year contract and you end at 68k or you can stay. That really doesn't sound bad and wouldn't working for the fed. govt. give you loan forgiveness after ten years? Or is the salary too high?

mpj_3050 wrote:One of my friends has a finance UG and an M.S. in criminal justice and works for the Department of Defense as a contract specialist for the Air Force. He said a number of new law grads are working there - starts at 48k with a 3 year contract and you end at 68k or you can stay. That really doesn't sound bad and wouldn't working for the fed. govt. give you loan forgiveness after ten years? Or is the salary too high?

Isn't the rule just to have debt higher than your income (assuming they are Federal loans)? Not 100% on that, I'm genuinely asking.

NoleinNY wrote:

mpj_3050 wrote:One of my friends has a finance UG and an M.S. in criminal justice and works for the Department of Defense as a contract specialist for the Air Force. He said a number of new law grads are working there - starts at 48k with a 3 year contract and you end at 68k or you can stay. That really doesn't sound bad and wouldn't working for the fed. govt. give you loan forgiveness after ten years? Or is the salary too high?

Isn't the rule just to have debt higher than your income (assuming they are Federal loans)? Not 100% on that, I'm genuinely asking.

I am not sure either. Maybe I am confusing some of the loan assistance programs from the schools with the federal one regarding income caps. If anyone has the answer I would love to know.

If you take tax classes in law school you can apply to the I.R.S. and/or Big4 accounting firms. They've been hiring an increasing amount of JDs in recent years.

mpj_3050 wrote:

NoleinNY wrote:

mpj_3050 wrote:One of my friends has a finance UG and an M.S. in criminal justice and works for the Department of Defense as a contract specialist for the Air Force. He said a number of new law grads are working there - starts at 48k with a 3 year contract and you end at 68k or you can stay. That really doesn't sound bad and wouldn't working for the fed. govt. give you loan forgiveness after ten years? Or is the salary too high?

Isn't the rule just to have debt higher than your income (assuming they are Federal loans)? Not 100% on that, I'm genuinely asking.

I am not sure either. Maybe I am confusing some of the loan assistance programs from the schools with the federal one regarding income caps. If anyone has the answer I would love to know.

IBR can be applied as long as your payment under the IBR plan would be less than if calculated using the 10-year repayment plan. This is calculated using your AGI and family size. They take your AGI, subtract the poverty level for your family size, and your payment is 15% of that. EX: If you make $60,000/year and have a family size of three (poverty level of just over $27k, here is what it would look like: $60000-~27000= $33,000x.15= $4950/12= $412.50. So, the $412.50 would be your monthly payment. If you have a ton of debt, you are probably going to qualify for IBR for probably the entire 25 years (assumming you don't take a PI job or make Biglaw kind of money). Keep in mind, however that if you are married, your spouses income is also included in the calculation and you still have to pay taxes on any amount that is forgiven after the 10 or 25 years, so better to pay them off than get stuck with a 50K tax bill.

A good place to get ideas about non-attorney government jobs available to JDs is the PMF website. PMF explicitly states that they do not lists federal attorney jobs, but that many JDs get jobs through the program. It gives you an idea of the type of positions which may be open. They currently have listings for things like:

Policy Analyst @ Dept of HUD
Equal Opportunity Specialist @ Dept of Labor
Asylum Officer @ Dept 0f Homeland Security
Environmental Protection Specialist @ Dept of Transportation
Public Affairs Specialist @ Dept of Agriculture

None of these are attorney positions or require a JD - but PMF is only open to graduate students and a JD will qualify.

https://www.pmf.opm.gov/

NoleinNY wrote:My uncle runs a company that handles annuities and estate planning and has a JD. Then again, all you need for that is the proper certs.

The financial advising part is not strictly legal, but the estate planning side is.

Compliance at an IB?

POTUS

AsylumPB wrote:Keep in mind, however that if you are married, your spouses income is also included in the calculation and you still have to pay taxes on any amount that is forgiven after the 10 or 25 years, so better to pay them off than get stuck with a 50K tax bill.

Not exactly.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness is tax-free:

FinAid.org wrote:A new public service loan forgiveness program will discharge the remaining debt after 10 years of full-time employment in public service. Unlike the 25-year forgiveness, the 10-year forgiveness is tax-free due to a 2008 IRS ruling. The borrower must have made 120 payments as part of the Direct Loan program in order to obtain this benefit. Only payments made on or after October 1, 2007 count toward the required 120 monthly payments. (Borrowers may consolidate into Direct Lending in order to qualify for this loan forgiveness program starting July 1, 2008.)

And ... you can choose to file taxes separately and work IBR as if you were single. Of course, doing that means you give up on many tax credits/deductions (child credit, mortgage break, etc.).

FinAid.org wrote:The marriage penalty inherent in the IBR formula was corrected by Congress (P.L. 110-153, December 21, 2007) by allowing a married borrower who files income tax returns as "married filing separately" to count only the borrower's adjusted gross income and student loan debt. This lets a borrower exclude the (higher) income of his/her spouse when calculating the cap on monthly payments under income-based repayment instead of combining the income as under the original legislation.

Link here.

Cosmo Kramer wrote:POTUS

Haha, very funny

This goes against the JDU grain, but I don't know how anyone can navigate our world without a JD. You open the newspaper and it's discussing Guantanamo Bay, which requires a basic understanding of due process and the federal courts. You turn to the sports section and there is a discussion about the definition of "possession" -- written by lawyers. Having a JD is like knowing all the rules.

That said, will it make you more employable outside of law? I don't know. I've never tried.

Just accepted an offer w/ FDIC as a regulatory investigator--they're undergoing pretty significant expansion in bank regulation. Many of those jobs are open until 06-30-10 and are pretty good-paying options w/ federal benefits until you are able to land a true legal job (if that's what you want). Available at http://www.usajobs.gov or http://www.fdic.gov.

Plenty of other federal jobs--they have a practice of accepting upper-level graduate or professional degrees as a substitute for years of experience in federal service.

Astronaut.