I'm typically highly risk-averse in my advice to law school applicants, so adjust the following according to your own risk tolerance and circumstances.
Law school makes sense only for a few groups of applicants. Whether an applicant should attend law school depends on balancing the following factors: (1) the employment numbers for the school in question, (2) the cost of attendance, (3) their career objectives, and (4) their tolerance for risk.
Generally, law school makes sense if the job that would be available to you as a median-ranked student is sufficient to service your loan burden.
jpham said it better than I could. If you want to go, pick somewhere that has low costs unless you cant get into a top 10 law school.
I go to UGA, which is considered by most to be a top ten value school. I would recommend at least applying there. They offered me in-state tuition for my first year and I applied for in-state status and (thankfully) received it. Add in my savings and my parents generously helping me out, and I'm probably going to graduate with around $600 in student loans. Not thousands, hundreds.
Unfortunately, if your situation is not like mine, I wouldn't recommend going to law school. Unless you fall within a very small range, it's not a good investment.
If you choose to disregard my advice, and decide to try your luck at an expensive school in the top 50's (if you can't get into one of those, again, it might be a good idea to think about what else you could do), for God's sake work HARD the first semester. If you get your grades back after the first semester and you're not above the middle of your class, drop out immediately. There is no money in being stubborn and the first semester WILL dictate your job offers for 1L summer. A successful 1st semester of law school = a successful law school career.
You two both sound like law students here. You should go to law school if you love the law. That's a big, broad question, and it's nebulous and difficult to answer before you get into law school. It's also the only thing that I've seen separating happy JDs from unhappy JDs in post-law-school life. It's not debt load or placement in a white shoe firm. I don't know a ton of people who loved their BigLaw placement, actually. Most lasted just long enough to pay off their debts and then got out. One thing you need to consider is whether you'll be happy with a law-related, non-lawyer job. I'd say a substantial minority of my cohort wound up there. I actually wasn't bothered by firm life, as a lot of folks are. Still, life took me in another direction, and I got an offer I couldn't turn down. About 10% of my working life is spent practicing law. The rest is law-related, non-lawyer work, and it's the most enjoyable work I've ever done.
I wouldn't throw out Miami or Stetson based simply on tuition. Unless the law school scheme has changed dramatically since I was there, over the next 2-3 months, the private schools that've accepted you will start to offer generous scholarships. My tuition at NDLS nearly a decade ago was the same as a half-ride at UGA today. I don't understand that to be a unique situation. Plus, as you get closer and closer to the final deadline to accept your offer, you can start to leverage your offers against one another. Notre Dame upped their offer by about 50% toward the end of the process. Another school moved me from half to full. I'm not sure if that was a result of me waiting to sign or me calling them up and talking to them about other enticing offers (be respectful and be grateful; just play "conflicted undergrad").
Also, if you're dead set on a region, there are almost always some well-regarded local law schools in the third tier that will give a full-ride to anyone who could get in to UGA and UF. Half of the lawyers I work with are Loyola New Orleans grads. On the low end, I can predict fairly accurately whether a lawyer has a Loyola or Tulane degree. Among the high quality lawyers, though, it's a coin flip.
Irish8248: 10 years in public service and the last 20 years of debt payments are forgiven
Just for federal (not private) lenders, right?
It covers Perkins Loans and FFELs. It's a
maximum of the last 15 years of debt payments, and in my experience, the benefit is mostly illusory.
You can't simply do a straight extended or extended graduated repayment plan (those are the guaranteed 25-year plans). Payments on either don't qualify. Instead, you can do income-based repayment, pay-as-you-earn or income-contingent repayment. All of those plans shorten as you make more money.
Let's say you graduate with $90,000 in eligible debt (a law school graduate would max out at $146,500 if he took out federal loans for undergrad and law school). If you're single and making a flat $65,000 a year, you're talking about approximately 40% of your loan will be forgiven. For most people, that turns out to be worth in the neighborhood of $7,500 a year. Remember, though, that a lot of that represents interest that wouldn't exist if you hadn't extended. If you bump up to $85,000 a year, you're down to less than a third. If you get married and she works and doesn't have large loans, you're going to have to look hard at filing separately. Otherwise, it's extremely likely you'll be paying off faster under the alternate plans than under the 10-year.
The PSLF is great for people paying off their federal college loans while working at the lower-levels of public service (for instance, at $36,000, half of your $90,000 eligible debt would be forgiven). For someone with a law degree, making an appropriate salary, it's a nice perk, but it'll never put you on equal footing with what you'd make in industry. Besides, the real incentive to stay 10 years is to vest so you can start pulling down that lovely state retirement...
