You think you have it bad?
Something like this? “I don’t open the e-mail alerts with my credit score,” he adds. “I can’t look at my credit score any more.”
But that’s not one of my bankruptcy clients talking — its a newly minted law school graduate. He’s only 27 years old, but has $250,000 in (mostly non-dischargable) student loans. According to the New York Times, “his secret, if that’s the right word, is to pretty much ignore all the calls and letters that he receives every day from the dozen or so creditors now hounding him for cash.”
This new lawyer is featured in a recent Times article that openly questions whether law school is a losing game. Even if you have no interest in ever attending, or don’t know any law students, the article is a good read, if only to make your own humble situation seem better by comparison.
I must admit that I have lost touch with the student situation. I didn’t know that Boston College Law School (pictured above) costs $50,000 per year. For a three year program, that’s $150,000 to call yourself a lawyer!
When I graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1993, I had $22,500 in debts, which I thankfully was able to pay down many years ago. It simply isn’t tenable to leave school with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, because, as the article explains, big paying jobs with big paying firms are few and far between.
The sad part (if you allow yourself any compassion for lawyers) is that these young people are NOT good candidates for bankruptcy, and under current laws will be playing dodge ’em will bill collectors, for years, perhaps for decades, and perhaps for lifetimes.
By Doug Beaton