16% of Midlevel Associates Owe More than $100K on Student Loans

Associates

16% of Midlevel Associates Owe More than $100K on Student Loans

Posted Aug 5, 2008, 06:20 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Seventy-seven percent of midlevel associates surveyed by the American Lawyer have student loan balances, and some of them owe in the six-figure range.

About 16 percent report that they owe more than $100,000, the Am Law Daily reports. About 44 percent said they owed $50,000 to $99,000, while 36 percent said they owed $10,000 to $49,000.

The magazine surveyed more than 7,000 midlevel associates from 180 large law firms. While the lawyers owe a lot of money, they also earn a lot. The median salary in New York and five other big cities is $185,000 for third-years, $210,000 for fourth-years, and $230,000 for fifth-years.

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Posted by Wolfgang - 5 months, 5 days, 4 hours, 34 minutes ago

If these associates are employed by the White Shoe firms, it is very hard to shed crocodile tears for them. At the outreageous salary levels they get paid, those loans will be retired in four or five years, tops. The ones one could feel sorry for are the kids who DON’T get into Big Law - they will be paying off these debts for years, maybe even decades - and they’ll never get the big salaries that the privileged minority get. However, the information about the staggering debt has been out there for a number of years. If they choose to ignore and think they will be the exception, then they have to be prepared to face the prospect that their gamble will fail - with all the negative consequences. Why don’t these kids go and do something they like instead of wasting time trying to break into law?
Posted by CJT - 5 months, 4 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes ago

Unless “these kids” actually enjoy the law and want to be lawyers. Not everyone goes to law school to get into “Big Law.”

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