People who want to become lawyers often take on six-figure debt loads in the hopes that they will help them get to a six-figure salary. That is, however, only usually what happens to graduates of 20% of law schools in the U.S.
That’s one thing you can learn from the Center on Education and the Workforce report that came out Tuesday at Georgetown University.
Most people who want to become lawyers have a lot of debt. A median of $118,500 is owed by law students when they graduate, which can make it hard for them to keep their finances stable. The report says that 21% of recent law school graduates say they wouldn’t be able to get $1,000 quickly in case of an emergency.
However, the report found that some young lawyers have a better time handling their debt than others. According to the Georgetown report, four years after graduation, graduates from top law schools like Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago made an extra $200,000 a year after taking their monthly debt payments out of their median earnings. Also during that time, graduates of 33 law schools on the other end of the spectrum, which teach about 12% of law students, were making less than $55,000 after paying off their debts. Four years after graduating from law school, the median net-of-debt income for law school students was $72,000.
The difference in earnings between law school graduates is due to a number of different factors. In general, the schools whose graduates make the most money have the tools and connections to help students get into top law careers. Meanwhile, women and students of color are more likely to go to law schools that don’t do well.
This is similar to what happens at undergraduate colleges. Colleges that help students get better-paying jobs tend to have a whiter and wealthier student body than colleges that teach most of the students, which includes a disproportionate number of students from low-income families and people of color.
The problem that students at schools with low-earning graduates may be facing is made worse by the fact that those schools have low bar passage rates. The average bar pass rate for law schools is 92%, but only 82% for schools with low-earning graduates. The 26 schools with the highest bar pass rates have 97% passage rates. Getting through the bar exam quickly can help a graduate get a good job right away.
Part of the difference in outcomes is due to the connection between a few top law schools and companies that pay well. Two-thirds of Supreme Court clerkships given out in the last 40 years have gone to law students at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.
As the report also says, people who graduate from law schools with high-paying jobs are more likely to get jobs as federal clerks or at the biggest law firms within 10 months.
“Unfortunately, the authors of the report say that the perceived rank and prestige of a law school has direct effects on how easy it is for graduates to find work and what kind of work they can get.” “The current situation won’t change for a while because women and people of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to attend schools with lower bar passage rates and generally worse outcomes after graduation.
People from disadvantaged groups are also less likely to work at law firms. Also, Black and Latino law students are more likely than their white or Asian-American peers to have more debt when they graduate. Putting these things together can make it especially hard for these students to get their money back.
Even though the results were not all the same, the report was positive about students’ chances of getting jobs after law school. Law school enrollment has stayed lower than it was during and after the recession of 2007–2009. This means that there are no longer way too many graduates for jobs. Back then, some recent law school graduates sued their schools, saying they lied to them about how likely they were to get a job.
Catherine Morris, co-author of the report and senior editor and writer at the Center on Education and the Workforce, said that people who want to become lawyers might want to think about more than just their first job after graduation when picking a school.
She talked about how specializations and the location of a law school can help students get the best job in the legal field.
She said, “Rankings and pay are not the only ways to measure success.”
