The Nest

Thanks for making my hyperventilate this morning! Good thing I have just under $200K!

ETA: This sentence annoys me “it appears unconscionable that a student loan indebtedness could go from $270,000 to $435,000 in four years.”

My debt went from none to 183K in three years. His only went up by 165K. Perhaps the NY bar needs to evaluate the true cost of attending a private law school in a HCOL area. 

karinothing:

Thanks for making my hyperventilate this morning! Good thing I have just under $200K!

ETA: This sentence annoys me “it appears unconscionable that a student loan indebtedness could go from $270,000 to $435,000 in four years.”

My debt went from none to 183K in three years. His only went up by 165K. Perhaps the NY bar needs to evaluate the true cost of attending a private law school in a HCOL area. 

I do wonder the line is...his situation is unique 26 years as a student... but I know there are probably a lot of students coming out with 250k in SL debt from undergrad and law school and no job prospects

hoping4septimus:

karinothing:

Thanks for making my hyperventilate this morning! Good thing I have just under $200K!

ETA: This sentence annoys me “it appears unconscionable that a student loan indebtedness could go from $270,000 to $435,000 in four years.”

My debt went from none to 183K in three years. His only went up by 165K. Perhaps the NY bar needs to evaluate the true cost of attending a private law school in a HCOL area. 

I do wonder the line is...his situation is unique 26 years as a student... but I know there are probably a lot of students coming out with 250k in SL debt from undergrad and law school and no job prospects

Exactly. My friend is about to graduate, she has over 200K in law school debt and she has undergrad loans. She went to a private undergrad so I can only imagine. She managed to do this in 7 years. I just feel like they are a little out of touch with reality. I mean yes, he did not pay or make an attempt to pay but still..it seems very very easy to amass that much debt. 

Ugh! That is sad.

I couldn't imagine racking up 400K, but honestly, I never saw myself having 225K in student loans (but I have), so I guess it is possible.

hoping4septimus:

see my post about how morally reprehensible it is that these law schools let 21 year olds go so far in debt knowing that they have a slim shot at the 160k jobs

ha ha. Yes I agree. I do think there needs to be more counseling before you take out loans of this size. I don't think I ever thought I would make 160K when I graduated, but I knew DH and I could afford the payments once I got a job. . . what I didn't plan on was it being so hard to find one. 

Speaking of which...i still need to send you my resume. I will try to work on getting that done tonight.

I feel for him....

I have 225K in loans and while I am employed, I'm not making anywhere near what I expected to be making and the contract work that I do is not stable and work isn't gauranteed. 

Should some of the repsonsibility be put back on the law schools?  Maybe some type of seminar before law school begins on the costs, the chances of finding a job, a better and more realistic view of the job market, etc

OK yeah, I don't think the NY Bar is really giving this guy a chance to re-pay the loans, but 26 years of NO payments?  He did not HAVE to go to an extremely $$$ school in California.  He did not HAVE to go to London. 

But again, he needs to repay these loans somehow, and denying him a license is definitely not a step in the right direction...

I know someone who wasnt allowed to take the Bar exam b/c her personal debt + SL was way too high, she had to object to the decision and go before a panel.

I guess the admisssion theory is that if you are hard up for cash you are more likely to do something unethical with client funds. : (
 

RunningMom:

It jumped that high with interest and fees only... NOT the cost of tuition.  That's how I read it.  That is unconscionable.

Also, to pp. I just think a couple things need to happen. One, the schools do need to prove more counseling. Two, I think schools need to re-evaluate tuition costs or work with local apartments to provide lower income housing for graduate students. Three, I think the federal government needs to get its head out of its butt and realize that students going to grad school need help too. There are so many programs out there for undergrad and yet...basically nothing from the feds for graduate loans until you graduate with the loans already in-tack. Why not offer grants to graduate students? Why not lower interest levels? 

it sounds like it was the collection agency fees that made it jump form 270 to 400.  that is awful.

seriously, i thought they let anyne practice.  It sure seems that way.  That is awful.  it might be one thing if he defaulted, but he hasn't, right?

Perhaps next we should bring back debtor's prison, just for good measure.  Or the pillories?

Poor guy.  While he clearly made some mistakes, overcoming all he did to get where he is is impressive.  And exactly how do they think preventing him from working in his profession will help him make good on the loans?

BarefootContess:

Sounds to me like Sallie Mae had something to do with the denial.  Yes, he owes a ridiculous amount of money but I am not sure high debt should disqualify him, assuming he has in fact followed all the rules about deferment.  These big companies can be big bullies.

Sallie Mae transferred Mr. Bowman’s private student loans, the ones not guaranteed by the federal government, to a collection agency, which tacked on a 25 percent fee. That agency transferred the loan again, and he said the next collection agency tacked on another 25 percent fee. Sallie Mae denied this, saying he was charged the fee only once. But suddenly, Mr. Bowman found that he owed more than $400,000.

This really bugs me. This came up in my character interview in 1991 in NY. I only had 90K in debt and the b***tchy attorney who did my interview (we had had a big run -in  over a closing just a month prior) brought it up. I was livid.

I do not agree with this, but to play devil's advocate, do you think it is more about never making a payment in all that time than about the actual amount.  I know you can make payments during deferment because Sean did.  Did he not have a job at all since 18?  He must have made some money at some point to live off of after he was out of law school.  I imagine this was a case where a $100 payment here and there, albeit a drop in the pond, may have swayed the judges on his character.

He hasn't made a single payment in 26 years ... that is weird.

However, now he's never going to pay it back (if he can't practice). 

honestly, I agree with the bar. He hasnt made a SINGLE payment in 26 years? give me a break.

laura*sean:

I do not agree with this, but to play devil's advocate, do you think it is more about never making a payment in all that time than about the actual amount.  I know you can make payments during deferment because Sean did.  Did he not have a job at all since 18?  He must have made some money at some point to live off of after he was out of law school.  I imagine this was a case where a $100 payment here and there, albeit a drop in the pond, may have swayed the judges on his character.

I think the fact he never made a payment is exactly why he was denied. 

laura*sean:

I do not agree with this, but to play devil's advocate, do you think it is more about never making a payment in all that time than about the actual amount.  I know you can make payments during deferment because Sean did.  Did he not have a job at all since 18?  He must have made some money at some point to live off of after he was out of law school.  I imagine this was a case where a $100 payment here and there, albeit a drop in the pond, may have swayed the judges on his character.

This was my thought, too.

Also, why should the government give a break to people going to law school? I don't get it. There are plenty of lawyers out there. It isn't like this is a field where we don't have enough people pursuing a career and it is necessary for the well-being of our society to have more people, in general, becoming lawyers.

He was NOT denied admission because of too much SL debt.

He was denied because he had not made a single payment.  

I do think the first makes a better headline but too bad it's not true. 

this is what bothers me:

  he graduated from the State University of New York in Albany in 1995.

 Ok, thats when he should have gotten a job and begun to pay back his undergrad loans

He enrolled at the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco in 2000.

What the hell did he do for *5* years? 

 After his third year, he began a masters of law program in London, where he lived with a girlfriend. He graduated in December 2004 with about $230,000 in student loan debt, and she helped support him while he studied, and studied again and again, for the bar exam.

Why would you go for your LLM before taking the bar?? Unless he failed before he went for his LLM... then again, WHY go for your LLM until you PASS the bar??

 He is an idiot. Nuff said.