Academic

So, I'm sure you've all seen this story.  Robert Bowman, who reminds me of the joke "Someone gets mugged every 3 minutes in this country, and boy, is he mad," has weathered a lot of obstacles and bad luck in his Odyssey to complete college, law school, and an LL.M.  Now, at 47, after passing the New York bar on his third time, an appellate court has held that he cannot receive a license because he has amassed student loan debt of over $400,000 over the past 26 years without any serious effort to pay down that amount.

I guess my first reaction is sympathetic.  So what?  The State of California is paying its bills in I.O.U.s this month, and there are thousands of Americans who owe $400,000 on houses with the fair market value lower than Barbie's dream house.  It doesn't appear that Bowman is in default on his loans -- he has taken valid deferrals.  It does appear that he is disputing some of the amounts (interest and fees on various loans over 26 years probably does get complicated), but he's not a shirker.  Just a deferrer.  If the court is worried about the lenders, then denying Bowman a license to charge clients for legal services seems a little backwards to me.

If the NY state judges are uncomfortable with someone legally amassing this much federally-guaranteed debt, then they should alert their federal legislators about the possibility that the student loan program spawns "lifetime students" who make deferring a way of life.  But don't take your annoyance out on Mr. Bowman.  Just because he has a large loan balance doesn't necessarily mean he'll steal clients' money or abscond with retainers.

Has the financial crisis created some anti-debt backlash?  My retirement account is barely there now, and it's all the fault of people like you, Mr. Bowman, who borrow with no thought for the future?  We need to show this promiscuous borrowers that good people won't stand for it!

I saw a quip the other day that now there are 3 kinds of people:  the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-Not-Paid-For-What-They-Haves.  This may be a (sort of) funny Twitter, but it's not good state bar policy.