Buy a cell phone, apply for a credit card, sign a lease, or borrow money, and invariably you’re confronted with a block of text that requires you to waive all liability. In those rare circumstances under which you can sue, you must agree to do so on the seller’s terms and according to the state laws of its choosing. These “take-it-or-leave-it” adhesion provisions are usually printed in a font so small you almost need a magnifying glass to read them, and in language so obtuse you practically need a law degree to understand it.
Actually, having a law degree may not help. That’s what Joshua Fensterstock learned after consolidating three private loans he’d taken out to attend Hofstra Law School in Hempstead, New York. “When I graduated, I had over $100,000 worth of student loans,” says Fensterstock, who graduated in 2003 and worked as a real estate lawyer at New York – based real estate, corporate, and litigation boutique Isaac & Associates for five years before opening his own New York practice last July. His debt load was hardly unusual: The American Bar Association estimates that law students attending private law schools took out, on average, more than $90,000 in loans during the period when Fensterstock was enrolled.
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