In recent months, the most prominent defense of law school as an investment has come from Case Western Reserve University School of Law dean Lawrence Mitchell, in both an op-ed published in The New York Times and an appearance on Bloomberg Law. Around the same time, Georgetown University Law Center professor Philip Schrag wrote a much more informed defense of the status quo in a review of Brian Tamanaha’s “Failing Law Schools,” which will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. Although Tamanaha has responded to Schrag’s review elsewhere, Schrag leveled a few criticisms at an article I wrote for The Am Law Daily that I will address here.
Before I do so, allow me to summarize Schrag’s argument, which goes as follows: If the economic model of U.S. legal education doesn’t work for many students because it leaves them with low incomes against unpayable debts, the solution to their problems is the government’s Income-Based Repayment plan (IBR) and its 10-year-public-service-job sibling, Income-Contingent Repayment. Most law students can borrow up to $20,500 in unsubsidized Stafford loans at 6.8 percent interest (less a 1 percent origination fee) and cover the remaining total cost of attendance plus living expenses via Grad PLUS loans at 7.9 percent interest (4 percent fee). If they fail to find a job that pays an income commensurate to their monthly payment obligations, they can go onto IBR, which saves them from the debt peonage that would have otherwise awaited them because the government will cancel their loans after 20 years.
