California Students Answer if Law School is Worth the Cost

CalBar.org (well, its e-journal for Cal. law students) asked the question whether law school was worth it to six California law students.

Two gave respectable answers. Four failed. Yes, I get that these are opinions, but they failed.

Three of them give some variation of "law is what I want to do, therefore it's worth the cost:

• Brandon Lewis (Chapman): "Law school is worth the cost to me because I want to do the type of work that lawyers do."
• Elisa Gibellini (U.S.F.): "[L]aw school is necessary to my goal and thus worth the cost."
• Onell Soto (San Diego [listed as "San Diego University School of Law"]): "[L]aw school is worth the cost because it's the path to doing what I've set out to do."

The fourth gives an even more ludicrous answer:

• Kuscha Hatami Fard (Cal-Western): "Law school has given me the opportunity to become part of an elite group who are some of the highest educated people in the country."

False and poorly-written is no way to go through life or present one's "high educated" status.

Going back to the reasoning of the first three, we as a society need to come to grips with the idea that career dreams can be overpriced such that the cost makes them unworthy of pursuit. People have no problem abandoning other dreams when the cost becomes too high. Why is it so difficult to understand that being a litigator or doing "lawyer work" may cost too much? Is it because if we acknowledge that some professions are just out of reach to non-wealthy people that the Emperor's merito-democratic clothes come flying off?

Look, folks, I really want to eat lobster every week and spend my afternoons banging a trophy wife. I really want that. But right now? It's not worth the cost. "But wait!" you say. "Those are 'things,' not investments. A law license gives you earning power!" Okay - sure - I really want to own a restaurant in the middle of New Mexico called China Ye-Haw! that'd be just like Casa Bonita only with a Chinese-meets-Western USA theme. There'd be a railroad running through it and everything. It's a dream, but there's no way in hell I should actually embark on it due to the high cost and low return on investment. Happy now?

Debt. I really don't think my generation understands debt, and why should they? Their parents obviously know jack shit about it, having lived their entire lives beyond their means to keep up with the imaginary Joneses in the advertisements, all while their public representatives piled liability on top of liability. And of course, most people, places, and things can get out of their ridiculous debts with bankruptcy, so people have been trained that erring on spending is acceptable, socially-beneficial even, as we just gotsta keep the economy going skyward, so you can screw up buying clothes or furniture or cars or houses or vacations or hookers or utilities and can generally scratch it out if you have to. In the select group of people where errors are discouraged is student lending. Try to figure that one out.

Which brings me, in a rambling fashion, to the Los Angeles Dodgers' bankruptcy filing. Here, Frank McCourt is using the United States Bankruptcy Court as a tool to maintain his stranglehold on a beleaguered, but still profitable, franchise, play white-collar chess with MLB, screw up his divorce proceedings, and correct a cash flow problem caused in part by his own abuse of the company (i.e., withdrawing money from the business for his lavish lifestyle).

While there's little risk that salaries and contracts won't be paid, I find it egregious that the moneyed elite can use a bankruptcy court to fix their multimillion dollar mistakes with asset-rich, profitable companies to better subsidize their swanky lifestyles while a college graduate who, for whatever reason (illness? honest miscalculation?), cannot pay back an education loan is deemed unclean and unfit for court.

Worse - you address these injustices to people and they say things like "well, it's too big to change" or they pretend that student loan debt is something it isn't, or that the risk of nonpayment is higher than with other unsecured claims. Much like the standard responses to the law school bubble, they're ground in complete fiction or a wholly pessimistic attitude towards reform and a callous disregard for social injustice.

Finally, looking over these students answers, I'm mildly bothered that many of the same people who think law school is a good investment now are the ones who may, in the future, be weighing possible settlement values against the cost of trial or further proceedings. Think about it. Are these the same type of people who will overvalue a trial victory in court? Ones who force their vision of the future, come hell, high water, or six-figure debt?

Bankruptcy: Financial AND Moral - All in One Post!

Every time student debt forgiveness or any variant of said idea comes up, critics emerge from the rotted woodwork like cockroaches and spout the same refrain: these kids should have to pay / you borrowed the money, you pay it / there's nothing securing these loans / etc. It comes about in various permutations, but the motif of refusing to let student borrowers file bankruptcy almost always comes back to either self-perceived personal slights ("I paid my student loan from 1986 off and lived like a pauper...") or systemic concerns ("No one would give an unsecured loan like that!")

Well, all of those idiots should read this article about elderly people filing for bankruptcy to escape crushing debts when their income isn't what they expected it to be.

[P]eople 65 and older are the fastest-growing segment of the population seeking bankruptcy protection. . . .

Of course, the big question most seniors have when it comes to bankruptcy is: Will they take all of my retirement savings and leave me penniless?

"No," Connolly said. "Social Security and retirement accounts (up to approximately $1.1 million) are exempt from creditors so seniors will continue to have that stream of income."

What's more, many states have "homestead exemption" laws, which protect home equity from creditors. In Massachusetts, for example, you're protected up to $500,000.

So let's say Gertie, Age 70, has $1,000,000 in her IRA. She owns a home outright that is worth $400k in market value. She was successful until recently retiring. She was extremely prudent and has no debt. As a retirement gift to herself, she decides to take her excellent credit and go to Europe for two weeks and spend 20k splurging on herself. She gets back and suffers a heart attack and winds up 230k in medical bills.

Gertie has the assets to pay this off entirely and fairly comfortably. Her simple net worth is over $1 million. She's not going to live for much more than 15 years after this, and barring a severe penalty on distribution (I don't know how IRA's work completely if you're that old), she'll still have 50k a year to live off of.

But Gertie - who has unsecured debts of 250k plus interest - decides she wants to "leave a little something for the kids" and so she files bankruptcy and screws the credit card companies and the medical facilities who enriched and saved her life, respectively, on entirely unsecured credit. The rest of us pay for it.

Now consider Gertie's granddaughter Gertrude. I think you all know where I'm going with this. Gertrude takes out 100k to get an undergraduate education. In four years, she graduates magna cum laude from the big state university with a degree in business. She scores a 165 on the LSAT and gets accepted to a top-30 private law school, say Notre Dame, which is her dream because she's a lifelong catholic and blah blah blah. She excels at Notre Dame, makes law review, gets a federal court internship, and graduates in the top 7 percent of her class. She takes out 50k a year and graduates with a total debt around 250k. All of this is quite normal, and she thinks it's a good bargain because with her credentials the top firms in Chicago and Indy will fight for her. And they do - she lands a BigLaw job. It's great until she has a horrible car accident; not an expensive recovery, but her once-beautiful face becomes mangled and scarred, and the partners find a way to weed her out after 2-3 years.

She has about 200k in debt and zero assets. But unlike her grandmother, she cannot file bankruptcy to protect her future, even though she doesn't have the blessing of an approaching natural life expectancy threshold.

To those who are opposed to student loans having bankruptcy protection, what's the difference between Gertie and Gertrude? Both acted reasonably and had circumstances outside their control affect their financial situation, and both wound up with unsecured debts over 200k. Why should the one who has the assets to pay creditors in full be eligible to file for bankruptcy protection but not the one who hasn't a dime? Why does our system let elderly people who won't be around in two decades wipe the slate clean and leave money to heirs while we saddle young people with non-dischargable debt?

Anyone who believes this system of debtor relief has any notion of justice - or even rationality - behind it is not thinking clearly. We're supposed to have consistent laws in this country. A millionaire being able to discharge catastrophic medical bills (often brought by a less-than-healthy lifestyle) while students are stuck with their form of unsecured debt is patently unjust. It would take the brand of circular logic available only to Congressmen and partisan apologists.

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In the moral bankruptcy category, today I give you Liberty University School of Law, which was recently spotlighted in their local rag.

Central to the law school’s mission is the belief that God created law, and law is properly understood through a Christian worldview, Staver said.

Law without a Christian standard, Staver asserts, can become a “cold instrument of force.” ...

Professor Rena Lindevaldsen, who has a background in commercial law and religious right advocacy, teaches “Foundations of Law,” a required course for first-year students. It emphasizes the importance of limited government and the Biblical roots of the law. It also advocates an originalist approach to the Constitution, one that upholds the original intention of the founders, rather than viewing it as a dynamic document that can evolve over time.

“When you look back at any area of law, whether its torts or contracts or pick a topic, you can see that the Bible actually has principles that apply to this. It’s nothing new that we had to invent,” said Lindevaldsen, who has taught at Liberty since 2005 and earned her law degree from Brooklyn Law School.

There's so much more in the article that pretty much damns this place as a serious law school. And in the spirit of Christian fellowship, this school costs over $46,000 per year to attend. It was recently accredited (last 10 years), and your odds of finding a remunerative job are slim. Washington and Lee (ranked in the top 40) is an hour away. University of Virginia (T14) is an hour and fifteen minutes away. University of Richmond (top 100) is 2 hours away. And then there's the megalaw D.C. metro area.

I at least have to credit them for being seemingly honest on their employment statistics. Check this out:

That's brutal. I understand the desire for an organized church to have Christian lawyer-soldiers, but surely there's a better way of going about it than charging kids 50k a year to attend a place where only 47% have a real job 12 months later (and that's what they're reporting...). Ever heard of a scholarship fund? Personally, if I were a legal employer, any resume I got from this place would go straight in the trashcan, as I'm skeptical a brand new, Christ-first school can really teach the skills necessary to excel in the law, especially when the school is little more than a transparent vehicle for right-wing thought. I'm sure they know this, and with that in mind, it seems like a shameless cash cow to feed the University.

If you really wanted good Christian lawyers, wouldn't you be helping young Christians afford places like William and Mary or Virginia, where they can really do damage with a legal career? Maybe sponsor church activities for students already at those schools?

But it's not the first time evangelical Christianity has jumped on the profit wagon, and I'm sure it won't be the last.