Forgive Us Our Loans

any new lawyers considering a public interest law career face a profound dilemma: whether to pursue the career they really want, along with its lower salaries, or get a "regular" law job so they can afford to pay off huge amounts of student loans.

Tony Lucchesi, a second-year law student at the U.W. Law School and a member of the board of the State Bar's Public Interest Law Section, will have law school loan debt totaling $60,000. He's in better shape than many classmates, he notes, because he worked between college and law school, so he doesn't have outstanding undergraduate loans besides. How will he settle the aforementioned career-decision quandary?

"That's a good question," he responds. "That's what some of us are struggling with. I think a good portion of students who are interested in public interest law will try to get a large-firm job, and then after four or five years of making a decent salary and paying off loans, they'll be able to do what they really want to do." The risk, of course, is that once they become accustomed to a larger salary, they may never detour to their once-intended career.

Debt load is a huge obstacle, agrees Nicole Penegor, also a Public Interest Law Section board member and a third-year law student at Marquette University Law School. "But you'll do it because you care about it," she says. "You find a way to make ends meet somehow. For example, there are ways to defer loan payments and spread them out over 20 years." But there's a downside to that, too. A middle-aged lawyer may still be paying off law school debts while also trying to put his or her children through college.

"People are coming out of law school with the equivalent of a house mortgage, and no house. That's really tough," says Claire Thoen-Levin, executive director of the Loan Repayment Assistance Program of Minnesota, which helps graduates of the state's three law schools. Graduates who take jobs in public interest law can apply the grants toward loan repayment. Individual grants usually range from $600 to $3,600 per year, with graduates' loan payments running as high as $10,000 annually. Grants are proportionate to need; those with the lowest income and highest debt get the biggest grants. Since its inception in 1992, the program has awarded 152 grants to lawyers working in 33 public interest law organizations.

According to a survey reported in the winter 1999 issue of Public Lawyer, loan repayment programs are now available at 56 U.S. law schools. Most programs are part of a law school, higher education commission, or state bar association. Minnesota has one of only two programs in the country (North Carolina is the other) that are free-standing, attached to no other agency, which makes raising funds an ongoing challenge. "One thing I would recommend to anyone interested in starting a program," Thoen-Levin says, "is to make sure you have a committed, stable source of funds that you can count on every year and can build upon."

Currently, neither of Wisconsin's law schools has a loan repayment program. Beth Kransberger, assistant dean for admissions and financial aid at U.W. Law School, recently volunteered to head up an initiative there to look at ways to better support public interest law students, including loan repayment programs. She says that 82 percent of U.W.'s law students now graduate with law school debts. The average total loan amount was $47,821 for a member of the class of 1997-98. "That translates roughly into a $725- to $750-a-month payment," Kransberger says. "That size payment every month for 10 years can push graduates and lawyers out of doing necessary, important work" in public interest law.

Discussion about loan repayment programs also is under way at Marquette University Law School. "But it's a discussion in the context that we don't have enough scholarship assistance at the front end," notes Howard Eisenberg, law school dean. "One of my highest priorities has been to increase the number of scholarships we give so students don't accrue the debt." Although a loan repayment program is lower on the priority list, it could be an issue to bring before prospective major donors. "That appears to be more viable than looking to fund something through annual giving or individual small gifts," he says. "The amount of money we're talking about would be fairly significant."

However it might come to be, a loan repayment program in Wisconsin could go far in removing a major hurdle to pursuing this career, say public interest lawyers. "It would draw more attorneys into the field because they could afford it," says Jennelle Joset of the Center Against Domestic and Sexual Abuse in Superior, who's still paying off her law school loans. "And it would benefit low-income individuals because there would be more attorneys to help them. Everybody would be a winner."

Wisconsin Lawyer