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Decision's Day After
Browsing the discussion board for students admitted to GW I find this (which you probably can't access, but I wanted to save the link):
I talked to the dean in charge of Financial Aid during the preview day about the Loan Repayment. He said that currently, it only applies to certain public service jobs. Govt repays something like $8k a year each year you work in a DA’s office or as a public defender. They do not do this for DOJ or other government agencies. Repayment for that depends on the agency in question, most of which dont.
Basically, look to spend a year or two in the private sector to put a dent in the debt.
I so don't want to believe this is true. When I visited, I talked with the Public Interest Liason in the Career Development Office about the LRAP, and he, of course, made it sound a bit better. He estimated that in recent years, only 21-22 graduates each year have participated in the program, which is obviously not many. Perhaps what he didn't tell me (and what I think I failed to ask), is what types of jobs are eligible. Looking again at the program's details, the criteria for eligible jobs seem reasonable and the major limiting factor will probably be the income cap. The "target income" the program tries to give grads is $35k, which isn't much, but it is enough to live on. I hope. I assume the reason so few people use the LRAP is simply that it's not too hard to find a job that pays more than $45k, and since the LRAP will pay a max of $8k/year, you'll come out ahead just skipping the LRAP altogether.
LRAP aside, in the interest of staving off second thoughts—or answering them when they come—I want to note one more rather important argument I considered in the decision about where to go to school. It's a bit abstract, but I get the impression that while American is concerned with helping the people who get screwed by social structures (bad laws or absence of laws, bad social policy or lack of policy, etc.), GW may be a better place to learn how to change those social structures so that fewer people will get screwed in the first place. For example, if you're concerned about domestic violence, it seems you could work on the issue on two levels:
1) You could represent and work with clients who have suffered abuse to help them, one-by-one, get justice and go on to better lives; or,
2) You could head to a larger group like NOW (for example) to try to change—via legislation and test cases in court—the social policies that seem to encourage domestic violence in the first place (e.g., certain aspects of welfare policy, maybe).
If you choose option 1, you're working "in the trenches," which is incredibly noble, absolutely necessary, and completely worth doing, but progress is slow, case-by-case, and the cases will probably just keep coming. If you choose option 2, you're working on the structure in the hope that your work will have wider, and perhaps more lasting effects. So the idea is to work on option 2 in order to obviate the need for option 1. (It's not that simple, I know, but I'm just trying to make the point.) Of course, you can always do both kinds of work, and I'm sure both American and GW will prepare you to do either or both. However, it also seems that going to a "better" (meaning higher ranked) school will put me in a better position to work on those larger, structural issues. It may be as simple as the connections the different schools help students make. American seems to promise lots of connections to grassroots, legal aid type public interest work; while GW might promise more connections to things like think tanks, national lobbying groups, government offices, etc. Of course, I could be wrong.
Anyway, it's time to think about other things. Decision made, time to get behind it. For those of you who haven't yet enjoyed a visit to GW, the newly-christened Left Coast Expat recently posted some nice pics of the Law School buildings and "courtyard." It's urban, with personality and a certain charm. Downtown D.C., very easy to get to, close to all that D.C. is famous for. It's all good.
Posted April 17, 2003 07:53 AM | law school
that guy didn't know what he was talking about. I remember at the admit day people were asking about LRAP and they dean made it sound pretty generous and didn't place any of those restrictions on it. He did mention who could apply, and I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was basically anything that isn't a law firm, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
I've seen a lot of bad information on that GW admitted students site, I would take it all with a grain of salt.
Posted by: matt at April 17, 2003 11:45 AM
As an attorney working for a huge private firm within sight of the GW campus, and who told everyone I knew that I would never join a huge law factory just to pay off law school debt, I have only this to say:
one of us...one of us...one of us...
Posted by: st at April 17, 2003 04:38 PM
Aw, come on now, that's just cold. Give us the inside scoop. You swore you'd never join a huge law factory, yet you have, and the reason is....? Did you change your mind, or did something change it for you?
Posted by: ambimb at April 17, 2003 08:19 PM
"Did you change your mind, or did something change it for you?"
I'm not sure there's much of a difference. The choices we make are inevitably hemmed in by factors other than untrammelled free will, some decisions more than others. This one was about 40% free will, I'd say, and the conditioning factors were previous choices with greater free-will components, like getting married, and borrowing enough money during school so my wife didn't have to live an hour away from her job. In the end, salaried public interest jobs simply weren't there, even at poverty-line wages - everybody wanted me to work for free, or on ridiculously low "stipends," none of which would have been enough to support my wife (a teacher) and I here in DC, where all of my friends and family are, and where we had chosen (there's another one of those pesky choices) to live.
So I did the math, figured out my monthly nut including the steep loan payments, and I chose an outcome. In the end, it worked out - I like my job very much, almost none of the cliches about the big firm environment have turned out to be true, and the work I'm doing is interesting and challenging. Last year I took two pro bono cases through to conclusion, and the partnership didn't give me any strife about putting those hours into my bottom line for the year.
So, the point? Hell, I don't know. Life stymies and enables by turns our free will to choose our own direction. I do know one thing, though - the market for full-time public interest legal positions at ANY level of salary and benefits is more cutthroat and competitive than the market for work in the private sector. I suppose the only good advice I can give is the most obvious - do really, really, really well in law school, and many of these issues will become, ahem, academic.
Good luck!
Posted by: st at April 18, 2003 12:32 PM
I hear you. I've often wondered how much my own decision to even begin law school has really been my own choice, rather than a constellation of circumstances that has simply led me to this point. Of course it's a little of both, but the circumstances play an immeasurable role. My aversion to firms is also based on stereotypes and prefudice. For some reason just yesterday I remembered that I used to reflexively dismiss lawyers as evil, blood-sucking, greedy bastards. Now I'm going to be one. So while my opinion of lawyers has become more complicated, I still have an unfair, unidimensional view of firm law, which is probably why I make so much noise about not wanting to work for a firm. Yet, I'm glad to hear that some firms are better than others. If it comes to that in a couple of years, will you tell me where you work so I can try to spend my 2L summer there? ;-)
That said, I still wonder: did your school have an LRAP? And if so, did you consider it? If lots of people wanted you to work on crazy low wages, then most LRAPs I've looked at probably would have picked up nearly all your law school debt. At least that's what they purport to do. So is the reality simply that the wages are still too low to live on, even if the school is paying off the debt? I know almost no one takes advantage of LRAPs and I assume this is why, but it sounds like you'd know first-hand...
Thanks for your perspective on these questions, which are paramount in my and many other minds right now. Have you written about these issues on your blog?
Posted by: ambimb at April 19, 2003 09:18 AM
My school had a couple of specialized post-graduate fellowships, and a strong program of funding summer work in the public interest, but nothing like the LRAP described on the GW website. So that could be a key difference. That program sounds amazing, and represents a continuing investment; I didn't see a sunset provision in the program - is there a limit to how long you can take advantage of it (short of the date of final repayment of your loans)?
As for why people don't take advantage of these programs, obviously I don't know, because my school didn't offer one. But I am surprised that more don't do it - when it comes down to it, if you are single and don't mind group living, you can have a fine life here in DC on 35K (assuming this is where you want to be after you graduate; considering the number of PI law jobs here compared to, say, Sheboygan, I think that's a fair assumption).
Anyway, the point about the cutthroat competition for those jobs that even carry a wage still stands - my advice is to get in early, work for nothing for a summer if the group doesn't have funding (or get a stipend from the school if one is offered), keep working during the school year, whatever you can do to become a part of their routine. Remember, these groups have NO FUCKING MONEY AT ALL, so they will, pretty universally, jump at any offer of free labor. That's a powerful tool to leverage a little indispensability, which could help you land a future job, once you pass the bar.
Good luck with it all. I would offer this advice as well, which I have seen in various forms in a couple of other places - minimize your contact with/dependence upon the uniquely insular peer groups that form within your law school class. You will know what I'm talking about within two weeks of starting school, and I urge you to avoid them like the fucking plague. These groups/cliques/whatever tend to be echo chambers of stress; constantly discussing class rank, who is studying longer in the library than who, and all the rest of it. Bag it. Let them work themselves into a lather while you treat it like a job. In by 8:30, out by 5, whether you have a class or not. There is more than enough time during a full work day to get all the reading, notetaking, outlining you need to do, done. Then go have a life. DC's a great town, full of great people, food, and music. Don't let yourself get sucked into all that paper chase bullshit. Life's too short, and law school, while certainly a grind, just ain't THAT hard.
Seriously, good luck. By the way, since you asked, my blog is almost entirely political carping, and hasn't really touched on these issues.
Posted by: st at April 20, 2003 07:17 PM
LRAP at GW won't pay for government jobs, among other things. The definition of acceptable employment is narrower than the website, and apparently the Dean, leads one to believe. That said, the school is still very much committed to public interest work, especially the Equal Justice Foundation's grants to those who pursue non-paying public interest jobs during their first or second summers (as the attorney above recommends). If you have any more questions about GW Law, feel free to email me.
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