How much debt does everyone have?

[lawmama09]

I go to a state school and I have a 50% tuition scholarship and I'll still have roughly 40-50K when I graduate because I have to borrow money for daycare. However, in comparison to my husband's 180K med school debt, it's a drop in the bucket. ;-)

[hogprint]

having your parents pay for your school ......"

If this is directed at me you are waaaaayyyyy off base, no parental assistance.

[Bob D]

having your parents pay for your school is almost as pleasant as them paying for your wedding. there are no gifts in life, and there are certainly strings attached in either "gift."

Lots of students have their education payed for by their parents. You don't see them all depressed about it.

The depressed people are those with student loans and no good job prospects.

To add insult to injury, the students with affluent parents often get better jobs because their parents know important lawyers.

[GA-fan]

just because you don't see students complaining for it doesn't mean there are no strings. Just think about when your parents pay for the wedding and tell you they want a string orchestra when you want a DJ. Who do you think wins? Now what kind of law do you the kids whose parents pay for school end up doing? I guarantee you their parents will have an opinion on the subject.

[DutchessA]

Law school costs a lot more than it used to, ABANET.org has a chart:

http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/charts/tuition.pdf

THe summary is as follows:

Type of School      Tuition-1985       Tuition 2005         Percentage Increase
Public-Resident       $2,006               $13,145             87% Increase
Public-Non-Resident   $4.724               $22,987             79% Increase
Private School        $7,526               $28,900             74% Increase

Not sure if I did the calculations right at the CPI, but here is what the tuition (assuming it has following general rises in cost of living, etc.) should be today:

$2,006, has the buying power of $3,793.86
$4,724, has the buying power of $8,934.29
$7,526, has the buying power of $14,233.58

With this last statistic I was trying to figure out what (if it has followed the normal trend in rises of cost of living) law school would cost--any actual math wiz can help me out with this one!!!

Oyyy, how do law schools get away with charging so much?

[Bored 3L]

just because you don't see students complaining for it doesn't mean there are no strings. Just think about when your parents pay for the wedding and tell you they want a string orchestra when you want a DJ. Who do you think wins? Now what kind of law do you the kids whose parents pay for school end up doing? I guarantee you their parents will have an opinion on the subject.

You've got to be kidding.  Why would a law student's parents care what area of law their kid goes into?

[NeoElle]

Seriously. I wouldn't go to law school with that much debt. Where'd you get your MBA? Why not just get a job? MBAs can get paid just as much, often more than JDs. Do you really want to become a lawyer that bad, or are you just trying to avoid real life? If so, you could do a PhD instead. They are much cheaper and they take longer!!!

Well I can certainly understand you or anyone's reluctance to enter another field with so much debt.  Blame it on my early shopping addiction, but I have no debt remorse.  Whether planned or unplanned, things simply happen that steer people in different directions.  This is essentially what happened to me. 

At any rate, if I was going to be enrolling in a T4 then absolutely no, it would make 0 sense to do what I'm doing.  But as it stands, I'm going to a top law school that has a good number of BIGLAW connections.  Therefore, I don't find it particularly unrealistic to think that I'll be out of debt with relative brevity.

First year associates have no time to spend their money anyway =p