Did you get your $1,000 worth this week?
The Regents are raising fees again. Story here. To people currently applying for law school, I feel for you.
I wonder what the total cost of schooling would become at this point. $40K for tuition, another thousand a month for living expenses (if you're a cheapskate) and we're over $50,000 a year. Now, let's talk interest rates.
Yikes. I hope people think very carefully about whether they really want to be lawyers before incurring the costs of law school. I also worry about what the overwhelming cost of school will have on the student body. Imagine this: you take four class a semester, at about $5,000 a class. Will the professors recognize how much it costs you to sit and listen to them? Will they notice enough to improve their teaching or preparation? I hope so.
Anyway, I'm trying to cut back on posting owing to no longer being a student, but I thought folks might want to comment on this.
I wonder what the total cost of schooling would become at this point. $40K for tuition, another thousand a month for living expenses (if you're a cheapskate) and we're over $50,000 a year. Now, let's talk interest rates.
Yikes. I hope people think very carefully about whether they really want to be lawyers before incurring the costs of law school. I also worry about what the overwhelming cost of school will have on the student body. Imagine this: you take four class a semester, at about $5,000 a class. Will the professors recognize how much it costs you to sit and listen to them? Will they notice enough to improve their teaching or preparation? I hope so.
Anyway, I'm trying to cut back on posting owing to no longer being a student, but I thought folks might want to comment on this.
Labels: DE, Legal Education Costs, LRAP
posted by Tom Fletcher at 8:19 PM
34 Comments:
Dean Edley: very happy.
Class of 2010: very unhappy.
Class of 2011: will we still have one?
Class of 2010 = what? who? where?
Am I a 1L?
Where is room 13?
Considering Boalt is still significantly cheaper than our peers (for in state anyway), I just can't get fired up about this. Even subtracting 50K from 160K gives a salary of $110K for one's first job. Not bad.
110K isn't a typical beginning salary. it falls between the two lumps in the distribution.
http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2007/09/distribution-of.html
9:35 - But for Boalt - which lies in that little bump on the far right of the curve (or somewhere very close to that - someone else can look up the average salary and prove me wrong by a couple of dollars), it is a typical salary.
We're not talking about whether or not it makes financial sense to attend John F Kennedy Law School at however many thousands of dollars a year.
I'd love to know what investment vehicle 9:04 uses to avoid paying any income tax on the $160K... in reality, I think even at $160K, graduating with a minimum debt of $150K that starts accruing interest at 7% is a frightening prospect.
As a member of the Class of 2010, I'm happy, or at least not unhappy, to see the fee increases were approved.
Why? I've already made an investment in Boalt and I'd like to see the school thrive.
Without money to support faculty and slap a new coat of paint on the walls, that's not going to happen.
Edley's rhetoric applies to me: I came for a great school, not a cheap school.
A couple huge caveats:
1.) Yes, it sucks that the school will be less accessible to some. Hopefully, Boalt can strive to offer good need-based aid and combat this.
2.) Yes, it sucks that non-private jobs will be harder to float. I really hope the LRAP program keeps up.
But don’t forget:
3.) The fact that providing a top-ten legal education costs more than it used to isn't Boalt's fault.
4.) The vast majority of Boalt graduates are going on to earn big money. The increased debt will not be debilitating.
In conclusion, I'm happy that Boalt will be able to compete. I also hope that we can move to address the problems above.
Under the new fee hikes, total annual fees would rise to $40,906 in 2010-11 from $26,897 this year. In 2001-02, the school charged $11,175, meaning the cost will have risen 266 percent in nine years.
The need for fee hikes has been attributed to the costs involved in recruiting top professors and renovating school facilities. However, a 266% increase in 9 years is nothing short of ridiculous.
We have new chairs for the first time in 50 years.
McWho: how much do you think the chairs cost? And they're a one-time expenditure, unless we're planning to buy new chairs every year.
Building on Boris' point, all you have to do to see the impact of this kind of thing is talk to the alums who spent $3k a year at Boalt and graduated with minimal debt, and who, in my experience, are usually horrified by the fee hikes when they hear about them. A pretty frequent conversation is something like: "Christ, if I had graduated with the kind of debt, I never could have gone and [joined up with the Civil Rights Movement/signed onto a small impact litigation firm/worked for a nonprofit]; I'd have to go work at a huge firm." Tell me about it.
I'm guessing the $40,906 number is for in-state students? I didn't see a mention of the out-of-state/in-state issue in the article. If in-state is $41K, that would mean out-of-state would have to be more expensive than the best private schools. Making private education look like a bargain? Smart Boalt, very smart.
Well, with all due respect to those alums who paid $3K for their boalt jd, the world has changed in the meantime. I have to admit I just don't get the "boalt does well now, so why do they need to raise fees" argument -- Boalt's competition is not static. They are investing millions of dollars into facilities, faculty, research centers, and all the other things that, like it or not, make a law school "prestigious." Call me superficial, but in 20 years I want people to say "Oh wow, you went to Boalt!" not "Oh, Boalt was pretty good back then, wasn't it?"
The fee hikes are pretty much for in-state. As far as I'm aware, the out of state tuition will be the same as other schools in our range.
Face the facts: Boalt has always been way cheaper than any school of similar quality because of state support. That support is gone. Look at Mich. and UVA --- they pay our out of state rate without the in-state discount.
And the chairs were meant to be a bit symbolic, but maybe I should have instead said:
Boalt has new professors, new chairs, new paint, wireless internet, we are renting space for offices, we have new speakers coming to talk, etc. etc. etc.
We may even get Mens Restrooms that only take one flush.
If you wanted a good deal then you should have taken your in state tuition at any other state school that doesn't have to compete with Columbia.
I agree with Mike: if Boalt wants to remain competitive with other top tier schools, we have to raise tuition. With Edley's plan to bring in so many new faculty members, there is no solution but to hike fees.
Further, from what I understand, the 100% loan forgiveness for people going into dirty hippie work will remain intact. I have no problem with the fee hike.
"100% loan forgiveness" is not an accurate description. LRAP offers 100% of (I believe) 90k plus 10k for the bar--and only if you make peanuts for the entire ten years.
Tuition at 40k per year makes that 90-100k less than 100%. And after loans for rent, books, etc, it is FAR less than 100%.
Boalt's LRAP is great, but don't kid yourself about what forty thousand dollars per year in tuition means for public interest work, "dirty hippy," sleazy right wing, or otherwise. It is a kick in the nuts.
I think there there are two competing visions for Boalt at play here:
1.) Boalt is a well-regarded law school that's relatively inexpensive.
2.) Boalt is a top law school that can successfully compete with its private peers.
I can understand that some people subscribe to #1; that's fine.
For everyone else, let's face it- #2 isn't going to happen without money. Sorry. There is no way around it. Either Boalt gets funding to keep up with its peers, or Boalt falls by the wayside. I wish there were another answer.
As for me, I agree with 11:07: "in 20 years I want people to say 'Oh wow, you went to Boalt!' not 'Oh, Boalt was pretty good back then, wasn't it?'"
P.S.-
I do think that, as a public institution, Boalt should make every effort to keep its LRAP program in pace with tuition.
2:48 here.
The assessment above strikes me as honest and fair. I'm upset about the tuition raises because (1) my idea of the good life does NOT involve BigLaw, and (2) I want to attend a 'top' law school, sit in classes with a whole lot of big brains, go to office hours with the authors of my casebooks, etc. Boalt struck me as the perfect compromise--unlike other peer schools I would be able to have the intellectual experience of a lifetime while still being able to work reasonable hours in a field I enjoy, without living like a dog.
I'm grumpy because that compromise which made Boalt so attractive to me looks likely to dissolve. On the other hand, if the competition-with-our-peers issue really can't be solved without more money, then maybe the compromise would have dissolved anyway.
I imagine that if Boalt were not here, the question for me would have been, do I pay a lot for private school academics, or only a little for a T2 debt-free quality of life? The truth is I would have paid more for a top school, and if that's the decision Boalt faces now, I begrudgingly endorse the fee hikes.
But the school had better f%$#ing compete and compete successfully. Otherwise I'll feel robbed.
2:48 - I agree whole-heartedly.
I really wish there was a way to have it all: the "top school" status and relatively reasonable tuition.
Given the situation, I'm happy that Boalt seems to be moving to secure its status.
I just hope the story doesn't end here... I'd also like Boalt to maintain its niche as the top school that puts a relatively high proportion of its students into public interest.
Let's keep the LRAP going strong and get some of our rich private sector alumni to start helping the school.
Hey, if I end up in the private sector, I'll be labeling my donations for scholarships and LRAP. The public needs top attorneys too!
2:48/3:53pm: that was one of the most articulate and thoughtful posts I've seen in a long while.
And you didn't even take the juvenile "dirty hippy" bait.
People seem to be ignoring the financial aid aspect. Boalt is the only school that offered me any, and I rec'd a $21,000 grant for this year. If they can keep up that kind of practice, it really softens the blow of the fee increase for some of us.
In the same vein, the fee increase will make tuition payment more progressive. Those who the fin. aid office determines can afford it will still pay the whole shebang, which will be more, but the poor folks among us won't end up paying much more that they already do.
"From each according to his ability."
The UC system isn't what it used to be. And at least they're hitting those of us who can most afford it.
I disagree, 5:30, at least in part. I understand the situation Boalt is in, or at least I think I do. I wish DE would use some of his charm and energy to explain the ins and outs to us Boalties at a lunch, or something.
Anyway, many people are worried about how much Boalt costs NOW. If the Boalt sticker price were really being knocked down fairly, according to how much people can pay, nobody would feel undue financial pressure, right?
Well, I do feel financial pressure now. And I think lots of other people do, too. I can't see how raising fees could possibly make the situation for me better for us.
I don't have any answer to the fee problem, but I want to make an observation. The amount of risk that individuals are taking in borrowing a $100K or more is enormous and I think too much for anyone to bear. What if you find after 3 years that you hate the practice of law or you get AIDS or MS and don't want biglaw hours?
To the extent that we acknowledge that people making $160K a year can pay large fees and that people making $60K a year can't, its a shame that we don't simply tax people who make $160K or more a year to pay for our state's higher education system. Of course, now that I'll be paying my own loans, I don't want to pay higher taxes too, but my point is that it is too bad that we haven't got a better social bargain by which the risks of paying for higher education could be better distributed.
I think it's unfortunate that California can't subsidize schools such that one can attend a world-class law school for $3K a year anymore. But I also don't think it's the end of the world if fees go up simply because, whether you want to do public interest work or not, you have ENORMOUS earning potential straight out of law school.
Even if we assume that you want to retire at 65 (which few lawyers do - those that are forced to by their employers often go kicking and screaming, and sometimes sue) you still have around 35 years to work, depending on when you started school. Given that you can earn approximately $200K in one year at a law firm, with bonus, I really don't think it's unreasonable to work for one year, maybe two, at a firm to be entirely debt free (assuming you want to live like a PI attorney on $40K a year, around $25K take home, your take home at $200K will be about $115K, so you can pay back $90K per year). Think of it as an apprenticeship. Compare it to medical school residency (where you have no choice over where you go, you must go for 3-8 years, and you make about $50K per year). You have a lot of options, including LRAP.
Life as a lawyer is pretty freaking amazing, be excited that these options exist for you - to spend a year or two making an obscene amount of money to pay for three years in the clouds of the academy and then a lifetime doing what you love and believe in. They exist for few others.
Michael - a lot of public interest folks think that law firm work is not only something we don't "love and believe in" but it is actually actively immoral. I don't mean to kick off a fight between public interest people and firm people, but to suggest that public interest folks should just suck it up and do something they feel to be immoral and the *opposite* of why they came to law school is not a very fair suggestion. Doctors apprentice, but they don't apprentice at hurting people - they're still helping people. If I want to do employment law and I work at a law firm getting experience doing defense side employment work, I'm hurting the same people I went to law school to help. Don't tell me that that's a price I should have to pay.
Sarah
What I love about the above post is how immoral = against my values. Anyhoot, here's a snippet from a Daily Journal article today:
"A new federal law will provide law-school loan forgiveness for lawyers who serve in the public sector for 10 years. But the American Bar Association and its allies want more: payment assistance for public defenders and state prosecutors in the early years of their careers in an effort to address the high rates of attrition in those jobs."
The bill is apparently H.R. 2669
folks, as a recent grad living on lrap and a public interest salary, provided lrap keeps up, one should be able to make it as a public interest lawyer with that kind of debt. it's not going to mean daily lunch out, new cars, etc, but maybe we all need to get over ourselves a little bit. you can't logically have biglaw lifestyle aspirations and public interest professional aspirations.
what the public interest community at boalt needs to do now is get a guarantee from edley that he's going to continue fully funding lrap up to a significant share of people's cost of attending boalt, no matter what tuition goes to. we might also think about asking him to implement some kind of front-end conditional grants to public interest students that convert to loans if they leave public interest work within the first five years of their career. this would keep the sum of their loans low, which takes some of the bite out of the process. look at the root-tilden commitment folks at nyu make-- you get scholarship money up front, but if you sell out, you owe it back. this is only fair.
finally, public interest folks at boalt need to stop deluding themselves into living the lifestyle their firm friends live, especially during third year. my formerly frugal friends started eating out at far more expensive places once they got a taste of firm life, and i just had to say i couldn't go along for the evening. it's hard to do, but necessary. we need to create a community that is more supportive of living the kind of life that a public interest salary can support.
Armen: if something goes against my values, I feel that it is immoral. For example, I value workers' rights. Therefore, I feel that opposing them is immoral, and I don't want to "apprentice" at an employment defense firm. I'm not arguing that people who disagree with me are immoral people - but my morals and my values coincide, which is probably true for most people. (It's just that many people at Boalt have morals/values that say that firm work is ok, while mine don't).
And anon - I totally agree that public interest work is doable right now - I'm not confident that it will remain so for later classes. My argument is that we shouldn't assume everything is ok because public interest people can just go work at a firm for a while.
Sarah
I felt a lot like Sarah as a 1L. I couldn't believe that people could sell out and go to firms. But I bit the bullet and went to a firm for a summer and was surprised that I actually agreed with the defense side in almost every case. Not only that, but it's not like the plaintiffs were the downtrodden and meak, they were just other huge corporations. Or, in the case of the one instance in which I really disagreed with our position, it was wealthy investors.
I think, and obviously this is just my opinion - but one informed from two years as an attorney and one summer at a firm and tons of friends who work at firms, working at a firm can be compatible with even the highest of moral principles. If you are into employment law (as I was incidently), obviously don't go to Littler, that would be insane. Probably also don't go to Paul Hastings or Gibson, or at least don't work in those firms' employment groups. But you can certainly do securities, or even general commercial lit. At the end of the day, you may be a socialist, but you're realize that law is about compromise, and, really, whether the huge company you or the other firm represents walks away with a few hundred thousand dollars more or less doesn't isn't going to effect the kinds of people you'd help in your later career.
armen, sarah (above) is exactly right. morals are based on individual values. morals are totally normative. you could make arguments for a lot of things at the extreme ends of morality/immorality, but that's just cause most people agree at those extremes. but for all that grey area in between, the only way to gauge what's moral is your own personal yardstick.
1:34 again...
also, I really think judges, lawyers, and everyone else, especially those who need to write, MUST learn the difference between EFFECT and AFFECT. they are not the same, and they are not interchangeable. and it kind of gets on my nerves.
I think it is also important to realize that you may be more valuable to a public interest organization if you have experience working on the "defense" side of things. You will have insight that some other attorneys at your org may lack, and this may help you be a better lawyer for your future clients.
Also, keep in mind that just because you represent a certain client does not mean you agree with that client's actions (see some ABA model rule that says all this).
Is there any letter or memo to the Boalt student body that explains:
(1) Exactly who our competition is, (2) Why the only solution is more money
(3) Why tuition and fees are the most logical place to get that money?
I feel like a lot of us "know" the answers, but have never actually been told.
Law has a negative quality--only once in a while do you feel good about what you're doing--like when you get your client off and he walks out of the courtroom in a happy daze.
You don't get to be creative very often.
Then there are the moments when you get to put the cops on the hot seat (for a change). But you have to pay with a lot of waiting and paper work for those special moments.
There are the moments when you say something really smart or wise on the record and it resonates in your ears for a few hours.
But if you're in the field because you want to get--well not rich--but well fixed, you are going to have to make so many compromises with your conscience and become such an asshole that you may not think it's worth it.
Dershowitz said it pretty well--"I've done things as a lawyer I never would have done as a human being" (or something like that).
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