What are the financial implications of my girlfriend's career path (loan-funded PhD, then law school)?
January 31, 2011 10:13 AM   Subscribe

What are the financial implications of my girlfriend's career path (loan-funded PhD, then law school)?

My 24-year old girlfriend is in year 1 of a 3-year unfunded PhD in the UK, for which she is taking out a $40,000/yr (£25,000/yr) loan from the US government. Afterwards, she intends to return to the US (where she is from) to complete law school and subsequently practise law.

I admire her for taking her education so seriously, but I am worried that she is saddling herself with an impossible amount of debt. She brushes this off with statements like, "When I'm a lawyer I'll be able to pay it all back within a couple of years." My question is, quite simply: is she correct? How much will law school cost, and how much will she then earn (and, more to the point, take home) as a practising lawyer?

My gut reaction is that she (and, if we remain together in the long-term, I) will be debt-ridden until her late thirties or early forties. I was raised with a different attitude towards finances than hers (basically: don't get into debt, ever), and this thought really scares me. I can't imagine, for instance, raising a family whilst still thousands of pounds/dollars in the red.

Obviously I need to talk to her about this, but I want to be in possession of some facts and figures first - hence my question to the Hive Mind.
posted by anonymous to Work & Money (49 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Does one need a PhD and a JD? I think a JD would qualify you to teach in higher ed in the USA (correct if wrong). Law is not an outstandingly great money field for new grads at the moment unless she goes to a top-14 school. What is the PhD in?
posted by parmanparman at 10:17 AM on January 31, 2011


She brushes this off with statements like, "When I'm a lawyer I'll be able to pay it all back within a couple of years."

how much will she then earn (and, more to the point, take home) as a practising lawyer?


You two might want to take a look at this graph.

If anything, things have gotten significantly worse since then.
posted by John Cohen at 10:19 AM on January 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


She brushes this off with statements like, "When I'm a lawyer I'll be able to pay it all back within a couple of years."

HAHAHA. Unlikely.

So, $120k for the PhD loans then probably at least $120k more for law school loans?

Unless she lands herself one of the extremely limited BigLaw jobs, it's going to take her upwards of 30 years to pay back $240k.
posted by amro at 10:21 AM on January 31, 2011 [7 favorites]


If you google "how long to pay back law school" you can see a bunch of estimates. It's not going to happen in a couple of years. Lawyers probably don't make as much as she thinks they do even if they do manage to find a job.

BTW - Your attitude of "Dont' get into debt, ever" is not a particularly healthy one. Most of us will be unable to buy a house without some debt, for example, and both my sister and I went into debt for our respective masters degrees and it worked out just fine.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:22 AM on January 31, 2011


Law school will be, at best, insanely expensive. Easily into the six digits USD.

Also, there are basically no law jobs. For anyone. Yes, I'm exaggerating the tiniest bit, but I know a half-dozen recent US Law School grads and an equal number of current students. All of them, even the one who got her dream job (working for a nonprofit for very modest wages), consistently and intensely advise anyone considering law school to not do it. Not "think carefully about it," like my teacher friends say, or "be certain you want it," like the med school folks. They say don't do it. The market is absolutely glutted, and people with very good educations from very respected schools are struggling to find work that pays in the $40-50K range, while struggling under the weight of a hundred grand in debt.

Saying "I'll make plenty when I'm a corporate lawyer" is not a plan. It's a dream. Her PhD alone is going to sock her with $120,000 in debt, and that alone is ruinous and crippling if you can't guarantee a really high-paying job. But corporate law isn't an easy in; right now, it's one of the most difficult fields to break into, in the entire country.

To be quite blunt, if she continues down this road, it is extremely likely that, for all intents and purposes, you will never escape that debt.

(I'm also a little unclear on why she's getting a PhD if her intention is to practice corporate law; then again I'm quite unfamiliar with corporate law, and it may be that her degree would specially qualify her for something.)
posted by Tomorrowful at 10:22 AM on January 31, 2011 [7 favorites]


Law is extremely risky as a career choice lately, in terms of being able to repay debt and secure a decent wage (or even get a job). Does she really need a PhD and a JD just to practice law? Definitely check the previous questions on the topic, e.g. those tagged 'lawschool' for details on why law school is an iffy proposition in this economy.
posted by asciident at 10:22 AM on January 31, 2011


"When I'm a lawyer I'll be able to pay it all back within a couple of years." My question is, quite simply: is she correct? How much will law school cost, and how much will she then earn (and, more to the point, take home) as a practising lawyer?

She's thinking this: "when I'm a lawyer, I will make ~$120k/yr. With $200k of debt, I should be able to pay that back in a few years." She's not thinking about the taxes and living expenses she'll have to pay (plus car, plus retirement savings, plus savings for a home), not to mention how crippling paying $2000/month in loan payments over 10 years is going to be. And she will be lucky to make $60k/yr if she doesn't go to a top-14 law school.
posted by deanc at 10:22 AM on January 31, 2011


(And even then, she wouldn't be able to do it in "a couple years.")
posted by amro at 10:22 AM on January 31, 2011


The only way that she can pay off that kind of loan debt in any reasonable amount of time is that if she goes into investment banking, management consulting, or founds her own successful business and sells that.

A law firm partnership at an elite firm in NYC will pay north of $500,000 per year, but that takes the better part of a decade to secure, and only a small percentage of associates hired in a given year will secure that partnership.

So, in a word, no, your girlfriend should not labor under the assumption that law is an inherently great paying career, from whose paychecks she can fund that kind of debt.
posted by dfriedman at 10:23 AM on January 31, 2011


What kind of law is she interested in practicing? Does she have the right connections to land a high end firm job? I lived with law students thorough much of my PhD and watching them (including the really smart one) struggle with debt 3 years since finishing, I think she is making a very risky choice.

120K (PhD) + 200K (Law School) + Lack of high paying jobs = Crushing Debt.
posted by special-k at 10:24 AM on January 31, 2011


Why does she want both a PhD and a JD? If she wants to practice law, then she doesn't need the PhD. If she wants to teach law, she should practice for a while first (probably). Law school is approximately the same as her PhD program (link to suffolk law school), although are you counting in living expenses in the quoted $40k for the PhD? Suffolk estimates that it would cost you all told, $63k / year for law school. It's 3 years, I think, so that puts you in the hole for another $180k. So you'll be in for at least total of $300k of dept by the time she's done.
posted by reddot at 10:25 AM on January 31, 2011


Please, PLEASE have your girlfriend read this recent article about law school graduates who can't find work and are trapped under a mountain of debt.

Quote from the article: "Even if you tell them the bottom has fallen out of the legal market, they’re all convinced that none of the bad stuff will happen to them."
posted by Tin Man at 10:28 AM on January 31, 2011 [11 favorites]


I also don't understand why she's spending $120k on a Ph.D, which seems utterly superfluous if all she wants to do after school is practice law.
posted by John Cohen at 10:31 AM on January 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


We go through this almost every other week. Here's one of the most recent "should I go to law school" questions.

As I pointed out in that thread, the average lawyer's salary is somewhere in the range of about $60K-120K. However, that number is skewed high, because it includes salary figures from experienced lawyers who have been practicing for decades, and also the salaries of lawyers working at the so-called "BigLaw" firms that cater to Wall St., and high-profile commercial litigation. The starting salary in BigLaw is about $170K, give or take.

So the gamble is whether she gets a job at one of the high paying BigLaw firms. If she wants to do IP law (either on the litigation side or on the business side), having a hard-science or comp.sci. PhD will be a great asset. But, since you state that she has an unfunded 3-year PhD, I'm assuming it's not science, in which case--trust me--no one will give a fuck about it, and it will do her no good in getting a job.

Happy to correspond via email (addy's in the profile). These days, law school is an inadvisable financial decision for virtually everyone who has to pay out of pocket for it. There is a huge glut of unemployed/underemployed lawyers, and law school is generally very expensive in the U.S.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 10:32 AM on January 31, 2011



My gut reaction is that she (and, if we remain together in the long-term, I) will be debt-ridden until her late thirties or early forties.


I'd guess even later than that. IIRC, the Obamas paid off the last of their student loans around 2000, and they weren't exactly poor. I have friends who've left law school with about 100k in loans - I'd guess a similar loan debt to her current program if she goes to a good law school (which she'll need to do to make good money afterwards).

Plugging some numbers into a Loan Payoff Calculator can be useful. Even if she has just the $120,000 debt from her PhD, assuming a 5% interest rate (quite low) and a ten-year payback period, you're looking at almost $1300 a month, every month, for ten years. Throw in maybe $80k more for the law degree and it goes up to 2000 a month.
That would be $24,000 a year. Even if you have a $100k salary, that's a QUARTER of your whole paycheck going to student loans. For ten years.
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:38 AM on January 31, 2011


Doing an unfunded PhD alone sounds nuts. How likely is it that she will actually finish the PhD in three years? I did my PhD in the UK, and very few of my friends aiming for "three year" PhDs actually did so.
posted by grouse at 10:39 AM on January 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


What is she getting her Ph.D. in? If it's in a hard science or engineering, and she's planning on going into patent law, it can be very helpful. Other than that, though, I don't believe a Ph.D. would be particularly helpful in a law career.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:39 AM on January 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


"When I'm a lawyer I'll be able to pay it all back within a couple of years."

Is her PhD in economics? If not, she's probably not qualified to presume such a thing.

And even if she were so qualified, she'd probably be wrong.
posted by astrochimp at 10:43 AM on January 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


(is she confident that she's good enough to get one of those jobs?)

Even asking this question is misleading. No one in her position could be confident of that. She hasn't even taken the LSAT yet.
posted by John Cohen at 10:51 AM on January 31, 2011


unfunded PhD? really? Do we have to go through this again? If they won't pay you to get a PhD, don't go.
posted by madcaptenor at 10:51 AM on January 31, 2011 [19 favorites]


reddot's figure of $300k is $1000 a month for 25 years. Even amro's lower figure of $240k is $1000/month for 20 years. $1000 a month, every month, until she's well into her fifties. Forget about luxuries/disposable income; that's enough money to seriously interfere even with rent-paying, unless she gets a spectacularly high-paying job.

This could seriously pass for a question on a parody of AskMe. Law school is regarded as currently very foolish; self-funded PhDs are regarded as always very foolish. Doing both is just insane.
posted by equalpants at 10:51 AM on January 31, 2011 [7 favorites]


I admire her for taking her education so seriously

I'm not sure if she is taking her education so seriously: Ph.Ds and law degrees are generally not complementary, and the doctorate could even count against her if she's set upon legal career. To me, it sounds frivolous, riding the postgrad experience on "free" money that's already mentally covered by the top-dollar career she hasn't yet got, and for which the prospects aren't that great even half a decade down the line. Signatures on college loan forms are bloody dangerous.

Incurring a starter mortgage's worth of tuition debt to embark upon a professional career in the US is increasingly common, and there's not much getting around it; doing it on the back of a superfluous loan-funded PhD is self-asphyxiation.

IIRC, the Obamas paid off the last of their student loans around 2000, and they weren't exactly poor.

Perhaps even later than that, based upon what Michelle Obama said during the 2008 campaign, and it was the royalties from Barack's books that provided the substantial boost to their incomes from 2005 onwards.
posted by holgate at 10:55 AM on January 31, 2011 [3 favorites]


Oh, and for what it's worth, I teach statistics. I mentioned the distribution of law school grad's starting salaries (which John Cohen linked to) in my class last week. Partially this was because it was a good example of interesting things one can learn from a histogram that might not be obvious from just having the average and standard deviation, but mostly it was because I figured that someone in my class probably wants to go to law school and doesn't know this.
posted by madcaptenor at 10:55 AM on January 31, 2011 [5 favorites]


You will probably read this article at some point as you think about this subject.

Basically, it's possible that she will get a highly coveted Big Law job. If she's living in Manhattan and making $160K, she might spend half that in living expenses -- most of the solutions for keeping costs down will be unrealistic if she's working 80 hour weeks, every week. So she might spend down her debt at 80K / year, every year. . . maybe.

The problem is, that nothing looks good for her. I don't know what she's doing with a PhD, and maybe the answer would shed some light on her thought processes. I'm usually skeptical of the financial wisdom of unfunded PhDs in the first place; following it with a JD makes me wonder what on earth she's thinking. Perhaps she has a plan that puts it all together -- perhaps her undergrad was a trainwreck, and she's using the PhD to rehabilitate her record so that she CAN get into a Top-12 law school and set herself up for Big Law. It's still a very expensive gamble; >$200,000 on a 10% chance.

I admit that information we do not have might make this all make sense -- she already knows she can a 180 on the LSAT, she's making perfect grades in her PhD and she's a registered member of a Native American tribe. But this does not look good, even from a "some debt is good, some good debt is educational debt" perspective.
posted by endless_forms at 10:57 AM on January 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


All I have to say about this is that it's a spectacularly bad idea.
posted by valkyryn at 11:01 AM on January 31, 2011


If she's living in Manhattan and making $160K, she might spend half that in living expenses -- most of the solutions for keeping costs down will be unrealistic if she's working 80 hour weeks, every week. So she might spend down her debt at 80K / year, every year. . . maybe.

Don't forget taxes. Making $160k she'd be likely to take home roughly in the neighborhood of 115-120k.
posted by amro at 11:02 AM on January 31, 2011


Dang, I should'a previewed.

To actually add to the discussion, I will note that all that money going to paying back her student loans won't be going into retirement and paying down a mortgage -- which is to say, she'll be in her 30's to 40's with none of the savings/nest egg a person that age earning large amounts of money would hope to have. If you are not from the US, you may not entirely understand that no-one has any faith in Social Security; the system is whacked and the BEST case scenario is that those of us under 40 may see 80% of what we're "entitled" to. I generally regard the wisest plan to be to expect nothing from the US mandatory retirement plan, and I believe this is a common approach.

So. 40 years old. 10+ years of 80+ hour weeks. And to show for it. . . a whopping zero dollars. Color me skeptical. You can have nothing at 40 for a LOT less work.
posted by endless_forms at 11:06 AM on January 31, 2011 [6 favorites]


"And she will be lucky to make $60k/yr if she doesn't go to a top-14 law school."

She will be lucky to make $60k/year if she DOES go to a top-14 law school. I graduated from a T-14 before the market got so shitty, and even then Big Law jobs were getting scarce on the ground. Also, schools massage the statistics by finding ways to drop the unemployed or low-earning students out of the stats. (For example, mine was in the habit of dropping unemployed women from their numbers, on the theory they were "having families" and therefore not "unemployed.")

Of the people who graduated with me 6ish years ago and started in Big Law, ALMOST NONE are still there. It was too soul-crushing, too divorce-inducing, or they got laid off. (Or, in Big Law speak, "fired," because Big Law firms don't lay people off ... which makes it way harder to get your next job.) So even the people who landed the $140,000/year jobs mostly aren't in them 6 years later; they're earning $60k or $80k in a secondary market, or they've gone in-house corporate (better hours, lesser pay), or left the law entirely, or gone to a $40k non-profit job, or are unemployed. So now they're paying those loans off on a non-Big-Law salary ... even the people who got the golden ring and got the Big Law jobs.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:19 AM on January 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


What is she getting her Ph.D. in? If it's in a hard science or engineering

If you're doing a hard science/engineering PhD, and can't attract funding, you're either going to have very poor prospects of actually graduating, or have very poor prospects of finding gainful employment post-graduation.

In short, you never do a PhD for the money. Especially if you're the one who's paying.
posted by schmod at 11:19 AM on January 31, 2011


Even assuming she gets into a top law school, gets top grades, and gets one of the coveted BigLaw jobs -- there's no guarantee she'll like what she does, or be able to stomach doing it for any length of time. I have known far too many people who liked/were good at either law school or law practice, but not both. For her plan to work out, she'll have to be exceptionally good at both as well as exceptionally lucky.
(For the record, I had an abortive year in an unfunded PhD program, then went to law school with partial scholarships. I hung out my shingle after the Bar and I flove what I do. But I'd be a lot happier without the PhD debt hanging over my head, and her debt will be probably twice what I've got.)
So, the financial implications are this -- crushing amounts of debt, golden handcuffs, potentially an income-sensitive repayment that will end up with some large amount of the debt being written off at the end of 30 years, but that still has you paying a significant sum every month for 30 years.
posted by katemonster at 11:23 AM on January 31, 2011


Eyebrows pretty much exactly summed up the experience of most of my classmates.

She appears to be taking a pretty uninformed position on her future earning potential and possibly on her reasons for getting a PhD (we don't know why she's doing that or in what field, or why in hell she's paying for it). Other than IP, as someone pointed out, the PhD will not help her get a Big Law Firm job.
posted by Pax at 11:30 AM on January 31, 2011


In my opinion, your girlfriend is more likely to go bankrupt than to pay those debts back in lest than several decades.
posted by griseus at 11:39 AM on January 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


And, if she does go bankrupt, the student loans will probably still be hanging over her head -- they're only dischargeable in bankruptcy in a very few cases involving extreme hardship.
posted by katemonster at 11:44 AM on January 31, 2011


There are some high-paid young law profs who have PhDs and JDs, but I think all the PhDs were in economics and they were certainly getting funded to complete them because they're brillant, hence the current sweet high-paying prof gigs.

What is her PhD in? Why did she decide to get an unfunded PhD when isn't conventional wisdom that if you aren't being funded, you probably aren't really gonna be competitive for hiring after the PhD? A PhD is totally unnecessary to be a law prof unless you want to teach something specialized like history of law, philosophy of law, maybe patent law, law and economics, etc.

A PhD will probably boost her chances of getting into certain schools, but it's still not a magic bullet to law profdom.
posted by elpea at 11:44 AM on January 31, 2011


My gut reaction is that she (and, if we remain together in the long-term, I) will be debt-ridden until her late thirties or early forties

Graduated law school 2009, will be paying on student loans until 2037 (I'll be in my fifties) or until I win the lottery (whichever happens first). Congrats to anyone who pays it off before they're fifty.
posted by angab at 11:46 AM on January 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


I very much believe that people who really want to practice law should do it, even if it's not the best financial route, but this a bit insane.

The median starting salary three years ago was $55k.
posted by toomuchpete at 11:46 AM on January 31, 2011


In my opinion, your girlfriend is more likely to go bankrupt than to pay those debts back in lest than several decades.

And if she declares bankruptcy to avoid paying back her law-school loans, well, good luck staying in good standing with the bar association -- a prerequisite to practicing law.
posted by John Cohen at 11:57 AM on January 31, 2011


There are some high-paid young law profs who have PhDs and JDs... A PhD is totally unnecessary to be a law prof...

Not to take away from your points, but just to be clear: nobody -- I mean, literally, nobody -- should go to law school in order to be a law professor. She might be able to be a law professor, but it's such a long shot that there'd be no way to know 2 years before starting law school.
posted by John Cohen at 12:06 PM on January 31, 2011


Something to consider on the other side: is there anything special about her that would enable her to rake in the $$ while others do not?

(I ask this seriously, because some have the right mix of skills, luck, connections, insight, etc. As a general proposition, law school's economic prospects appear poor; however, she is not a general proposition.)
posted by coffeefilter at 12:32 PM on January 31, 2011


Congrats to anyone who pays it off before they're fifty.

I have a dear friend who is a partner at a very very fancy Big Law firm, who is married to a woman with an excellent job and who also inherited some significant money that enabled them to buy a lovely home without taking out a giant mortgage. He has just paid off his last law school loan, and he is 48.

The thing is that the firms which pay big bucks are in New York and London and Tokyo and Paris and so on--in other words, they're in the most expensive places in the world to live. And you have to live up to your means if you want to make partner, which means a fancy place to live and high-end clothes and taking a table at the senior partners' favorite charity galas and all that. It's not like you can keep living like a student and move up in Big Law.

So, yeah. Unless the OP's GF has some very special factors on her side, she's going to be in debt for a bazillion years, no lie.
posted by Sidhedevil at 12:47 PM on January 31, 2011 [4 favorites]


unfunded phd's are a stupid idea.
posted by modernnomad at 1:04 PM on January 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


anonymous: I admire her for taking her education so seriously

holgate: I'm not sure if she is taking her education so seriously: Ph.Ds and law degrees are generally not complementary, and the doctorate could even count against her if she's set upon legal career. To me, it sounds frivolous ...

This. This. The kind of pointless degree collecting she's doing is pretty much the opposite of taking her education seriously. Unless she has some kind of good reason that you haven't mentioned for needing these two degrees, and it's not just vanity/ego at the idea of having a PhD and a JD, this is nothing more than frivolity, really really expensive and dumb frivolity.
posted by Ashley801 at 1:12 PM on January 31, 2011 [5 favorites]


My gut reaction is that she (and, if we remain together in the long-term, I) will be debt-ridden until her late thirties or early forties.

This is really, really optimistic. Hell, I'm turning (ahem) 40 next month & still paying off my $20k undergraduate loan. Taking on $300k for college is like taking on a 30-year mortgage, but with worse terms and no guarantee that she'll ever make the salary to pay it back (see the NYTimes article for a reality check on salary expectations). And student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. This is a crazy idea.
posted by media_itoku at 1:24 PM on January 31, 2011


I don't see anything wrong with doing degree programs just because you really, really want to. The "wrong" part here, to me, is not being realistic about how much debt you're getting into by doing them, and how long it's going to take you to pay that debt off.

Living a dream is great. Living in a dream, not so much.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:42 PM on January 31, 2011 [3 favorites]


"When I'm a lawyer I'll be able to pay it all back within a couple of years."

This is so wrong it's terrifying. Chiming in to agree with everyone who has shuddered at this irresponsible debt accumulation. I am about to graduate from a great law school, and I am lucky enough to have landed one of the very few high-paying jobs that remain at the big firms. So if your girlfriend is tremendously lucky, she may eventually be in my enviable position, which looks like this:

- I have more than $200,000 of debt from law school alone.
- My high-paying job is in NYC, where the cost of living is very high. The law firms that pay the high salaries are overwhelmingly concentrated in cities where the cost of living is very high.
- If I am lucky and can sustain monthly payments of at least $2,500, I might be able to pay off the bulk of my debt in ten years. This can only happen if: 1) I don't burn out from working on mind-numbing projects for 10-14 hours a day, seven days a week and lose my high-paying job before the ten years are up, 2) the economy doesn't crash, causing me to lose my high-paying job before the ten years are up, 3) unexpected illness or other sudden life event doesn't cause me to lose my high-paying job before the ten years are up.

That is pretty much the best-case scenario for your girlfriend. Except she will have more debt. $120,000 more.

I went in with my eyes open because I knew I had an unusually high likelihood of landing a high-paying job. I gambled and won. Even so, I find myself very worried about the possibility of burning out, and I am also having to reassess my somewhat optimistic repayment plan.

If you are considering making a long-term commitment to your girlfriend and entangling your finances with hers, you need to hear a much more specific - and much more realistic - plan from her.
posted by prefpara at 1:42 PM on January 31, 2011 [5 favorites]


Your girlfriend is either living in a hole or has been abso-fucking-lutely swindled by the law schools' artificial inflation their post-grad employment stats. Do not shackle yourself to this future.
posted by Bebo at 1:56 PM on January 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


She is going to chain herself to the rat-race.
There will be no escape from being someone else's slave.

She will not be able to start her own firm -
or focus on non-profit work - or just take 6 months off.

She is going to be fighting the debt boulder for years.
She is going to regret it.
posted by Flood at 2:42 PM on January 31, 2011


Seconding everyone above who says you should not take out loans to fund a PhD (in any subject that comes to mind). Unless there are details we're missing, she has already made a bad decision there. It might even be worth quitting and applying again until she can get a funded spot in a PhD program in the US. Tell her to stop with $40K of debt, rather than adding a further $80K on top of it.

Who was giving her advice on this? She should find someone else to give her advice. These are very, very expensive decisions and she needs some more sound advice moving forward.
posted by LobsterMitten at 4:07 PM on January 31, 2011


Nothing to add other than you can count me among those you lost as soon as you got to the part about an unfunded PhD. This is nuts.
posted by drpynchon at 8:38 PM on January 31, 2011


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