The Numbers and Public Interest Work
I sent the following e-mail on October 30th to Boalt’s Interim Dean, the Dean of Students, the Director of Financial Aid, the Public Interest Director of the Office of Career Services, and the Director of the Center for Social Justice. I’m not going to publish the response I got (unless they ask me to) because I found it so disappointing that I believe posting it could only be seen as an attempt to portray the administration in an unfavorable light.
———–
Hello all,
I attended the meeting Tuesday on How to Finance a Career in Public Interest work. I have to say I found it very discouraging, but I am also glad to know the realities we face. I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since and it’s made me quite depressed. I’m hoping that one of you can point out a problem in my reasoning or calculating. It’s obvious to me that some people manage to do public interest work, but what I now fear is that it has recently become significantly more difficult fiscally. I hope this doesn’t come off as confrontational, because I really just want to understand how I can make a public interest career work and I desperately hope I’m missing something. I apologize for the length of what follows, but I really felt it necessary to crunch the actual numbers to get a grip on the reality of the situation, and I also have multiple audiences with whom I might share this. I hope you’ll read it.
The Numbers and Public Interest Work
I want to use my law degree in a Public Interest job. Everyone vaguely knows that law school is expensive and that public interest attorneys don’t get paid as much as their big firm counterparts. But recently I think the situation has become even more problematic and even those closest to the situation fail to realize the extent of the crisis. I will use the actual numbers from my situation at Boalt Hall to demonstrate the problem.
The first element of the problem at Boalt is that The University of California system just raised tuition and fees by 30%. This has dramatically changed the situation of Law students who hope to pursue a public interest career, and it is not clear to me that anyone fully recognizes this yet.
Through subsidized and unsubsidized loans, the Federal government will loan law students $18,500 per year. These Federal loans will, thankfully, cover an in-state resident’s tuition. I was also given a small grant of $750 [Update: I checked again. It's $725.] each semester based on financial need. After paying my tuition and fees this semester with those Federal loans, I was left with $1,660.05. That amount is what is supposed to buy my books, which were around $600, and pay my living expenses through the entire fall semester. The Financial Aid Office estimates that a monthly budget of $1,965 is required [Figure from powerpoint slide at recent Financial Aid meeting.] (or perhaps as much as $2,019 [Figure from web site.]). As is obvious, the amount left from Federal loans does not even get me through the first month of school.
Instead, the budget proposed by the financial aid office, would require that I have $1,965 x 9 months of school = $17,685 to get through the school year. If we deduct out the $1,660.05 I have left over each semester from Federal loans, that leaves me with an annual unmet need of $14,364.90. Where is that 14 thousand dollars per year supposed to come from? For those public interest-minded students who are not independently wealthy, private loans are the only answer.
But now let’s think about the debt load a student like me will incur over three years. There’s $18,500 each year in Federal loans, for a three year total of $55,500. And if my expenses don’t rise (ha ha) then I will need $43,094.70 in private loans just to live. None of this includes summer expenses or the expense of a Bar review course (at least $2,000) after graduation. When those 9 months of summers are added up, another $17,685 must be borrowed or earned during summers. For the public interest-minded student, almost all summer internships will be unpaid. That would bring their total loan debt to $116,279.90, not counting a bar-review course. Now it’s possible that a student might be able to scrimp by on fellowships over the summers, so backing those summer expenses out, we still get a total debt after three years of $98,594.90, not counting a bar review course. This is a key fact not yet fully known or acknowledged. As far as I can tell, no student (without a scholarship of some sort or prior wealth) can get out of Boalt with less than $100,000 in debt. (I will also ignore that I have $24,500 in prior debt from earning a Master’s Degree, and that more and more students enter law school having already earned advanced degrees and hence having already acquired significant loan debt. For these students the situation is even more dire.)
The Financial Aid Office at Boalt reports that the average starting salary in public interest jobs is $36,000 per year, or $3,000 per month before taxes. They also provide a rule for calculating loan repayments that suggests for each $10,000 borrowed, $125 must be paid back each month. In either scenario described above, over $100,000 of debt is incurred, creating a monthly debt payment of at least $1,250. If the public interest-minded attorney continues to live like a student, they would still need $1,965 per month for expenses and $1,250 for loan repayments, giving them a monthly need of $3,215. But, after taxes, they will have only $2,000 with which to meet this $3,215 of need. Every month our public interest lawyer comes up $1,215 short. (Note: if our public interest lawyer could just find a job paying $55,000 annually, and had avoided summer debt, then they could almost make this budget work. Good luck finding that job, though.)
Enter Boalt’s Loan Repayment Assistance Plan (LRAP). I understand that this plan is better than many other similar plans. But thankful as I am for that, it will soon be clear that it must be improved. First of all, Boalt’s LRAP will only help with Federal Loans, that is, it will only help with that first $55,500 of debt. More on this later. But secondly, for the average public interest lawyer earning $36,000 it provides only $680.67 per month in loan repayment assistance. This still leaves the average public interest lawyer $534.33 short every month. Finally, even if that gap could be overcome, once the Federal Loans are payed off, LRAP cuts out, leaving our friend with over $45,000 in unpaid loans and few if any means to repay them. If the public interest lawyer was not already bankrupt, they are now.
I genuinely hope that the above contains some fatal flaw of reasoning or calculation, but I have become convinced that it does not. The question then becomes what to do in light of these facts. The public interest minded student could seek paying jobs during the summer to reduce their ultimate debt. The summer jobs at big firms, if our student can get them, pay roughly $2,400 per week, that is, $9,600 per month or $28,800 each summer, before taxes. After taxes, about $20,000 is left, and after summer living expenses about $14,000 is left for loan repayment purposes. So, over two summers, such a student could conceivably reduce their debt by $28,000. Sounds great. Unfortunately, this still leaves them with at least $72,000 of debt, and a little over $875 in monthly loan repayments. As we already noted, LRAP will meet at most $680.67 of this need, leaving the average public interest lawyer about $200 short every month.
The above ignores the important fact that such a student is extremely unlikely to get the public interest job they want anyway, as they have demonstrated absolutely no commitment to public interest work, having spent both their summers at big firms. The same problem arises if they decide to continue on at the big firm for a year or two after graduation to pay off their debt. Once they do, they will have no contacts and no connection to the public interest sector in which they seek employment. Let’s also ignore that many who graduate from law school would like to do things like have children or buy a house. Unfortunately, these things look financially impossible given the numbers above.
It seems to me this situation presents a drastic crisis for the future of public interest students and attorneys. Even those students most desperately committed to their respective causes will find themselves totally constrained by these financial realities. Consequently, I feel that only drastic solutions can solve these problems. First the LRAP program must recognize that given the recent tuition increases, the average Boalt student will not be able to graduate without substantial private loans. Consequently, LRAP must be extended to pay more per month and must continue until all school loans, including private loans, are repaid.
An even better solution would be to prevent the debt to begin with. While it’s probably never happened, a tuition-increase rollback would be a great idea. We should work to make this happen. A substantial improvement to the grant program, more and larger summer public interest fellowships and all other methods of preventing students from acquiring the debt to begin with should also be pursued. The cost of housing in the area is problematic, especially for a married student with pets, like myself. Additional offerings for students would help here. Finally, the public interest community needs to know about this. For many, it has been years since they graduated and they are not aware of the incredible debt load students now bring with them. If the public interest sector could bring their salaries up to just half of what the big firms now pay ($125,000 to start), the numbers could start to become feasible.
All of these solutions require money in an already financially trying time. I recognize this. We’d like to see Boalt’s facilities improved, we’d like to add more faculty, have more programs, etc. But, I think our students and the work they will do in the public’s interest must come first. Otherwise, we’re selling a lie. We cannot have the great public interest programs that we have during law school if it is simultaneously fiscally impossible for students to pursue public interest jobs after graduation. This lies to and hurts these students. But the worst thing of all that will come from these realities is that many who would pursue good work on the public’s behalf will be forced to pursue other alternatives. When that happens, our society itself ends up the biggest loser of all.
Brian Carver, 1L
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.