Legal News

Harvard Law: Take a Public Interest Job and the Third Year?s On Us!

By Dan Slater

Do loan forgiveness programs steer undecided law students into public interest careers?

Harvard law school is making a $3 million-per-year bet that they do, reports today’s NYT. Today, the school’s dean, Elena Kagan (pictured), will announce a plan to waive tuition for 3L’s who pledge to spend five years working either for nonprofit organizations or the government. That’s a savings of about $40,000.

“We know that debt is a big issue,” said Kagan. “We have tried to address that over the years with a very generous loan forgiveness program, but we started to think that we could do better.” While the annual cost of the program to Harvard law school, whose endowment exceeds $1.7 billion, is estimated at $3 million, it could be more if the program helps boost the percentage of graduates who go into public interest or government jobs, which right now is between 9.8% and 12.1% of any given class.

We often hear about law students and lawyers who turn down exciting jobs with government and non-profit organizations because they can’t, given triple-digit debt, afford to make $40,000 (or less) per year. Will the Harvard program have them singing a different tune? Will those on the fence between, say, S&C and a job in the DA’s office, choose the latter?

Brandon Weiss, a Harvard 3L who plans to join a public-interest law firm after graduation, told the Times yes. “Some students come in and know that public interest is what they want to do,” said Weiss. “There are probably other students that know they want to go to a big law firm. This program will help those students who are in between.”

LB’ers: We’re not current on what other loan forgiveness programs are like these days, but Harvard’s seems generous. Do you think it’ll work?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).