Lifting the Burden: Law Student Debt as a Barrier to Public Service

14Lifting the Burden: The Problem and Its SolutionsLifting the Burden:The Problem and Its SolutionsLAW STUDENT DEBT AS ANIMPEDIMENT TO PUBLIC SERVICELEGAL CAREERSThe great majority of American lawstudents pay for their education bytaking out loans through federallysubsidized and private loan programs.The typical law student today graduateswith debts of around $80,000, which sheexpects to pay out of later earnings. Ingeneral, this system of financing legaleducation has served well both thestudents and America’s legal system:through it, each year, thousands ofstudents enter the profession bearing, asthey should, the substantial majority ofthe costs of their own education. But oneenormous shortcoming of this financing“I am a non-traditional law student. I was asocial worker before enrolling in law school.I would love to be able to work in the publicsector as a lawyer and utilize my social workskills that I have acquired. However, it isimpossible. I have graduate loans from socialwork school and will soon be faced withsignificant law school loans as well. If therewere opportunities similar to that of the medicalfield where I could commit a certain number ofyears to a public service legal job for forgivenesson my student loans, then you could not stopme from signing up. Unfortunately, until thatday comes, only money puts food on the table,not good intentions.”2003 Law School Graduate and member ofthe ABA Law Student Divisionsystem is becoming more and moreacute each year: as law school tuitionsand the debts of law students haveincreased, fewer law school graduatescan afford to take the comparatively low-paying public service legal positions thatare available in federal, state and local government agencies and in legal servicesand public defender offices that serve the poor. Even those graduates with thestrongest commitments to public service shrink from the prospect that a third ormore of their monthly income will be taken up in debt payments if they take a publicservice legal position.The consequences are serious. Today, some public service employers, such asprosecutors, legal services and public defender offices and nonprofit organizations,have vacancies they cannot fill because new law graduates cannot afford to work forthem. Many such public service employers report having a difficult time attractingthe best qualified law graduates. Alternatively, those who do hire law graduates findthat, because of educational debt payments, those whom they do hire leave just atthe point when they provide the most valuable services.Over the last decade, higher and higher proportions of the most able studentsgraduating from law school with ambitions to work in public service are taking jobsinstead in mid-sized and large private firms (where salaries have risen at close to thepace of the sums law students are borrowing) and those who do adhere to theiraspirations and take jobs in public service can barely make ends meet.Government, law schools and the legal profession as a whole must find solutionsto this problem. All have long accepted responsibility for helping to ensure that legalservices are available and affordable to low-income persons. All have a stake inensuring that local, state and federal governments and public service organizationshave lawyers providing the public with the highest quality representation.The legal profession has a special responsibility to address this problem. At itsfoundation, the legal profession is about service: service to individuals and organizations;service to private and public entities. Not only does the profession have anobligation to represent clients who can afford to pay, but also to ensure access tojustice for those individuals and communities that cannot afford a lawyer. Theprofession’s public service responsibility is met both by lawyers working full-time inthe public sector, such as for government agencies or legal services offices, and