Debt-laden student escapes job market by going to law school
by Mark A. Cohen
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today about parents having to "bailout" loan-laden students having trouble finding well-paying jobs in today's abysmal economy. I found the following excerpt particularly relevant to our readership:
Some parents are taking a deep breath and upping the ante. A Pennsylvania mother says that after her 23-year-old daughter took on $20,000 in loans to help finance a $160,000 undergraduate degree, the best job she could get last year paid less than $40,000, failing to cover rent, expenses and loan payments. In hopes of helping her gain entry to a higher-paying career, her parents picked up her loan payments, paid off $2,000 in credit-card debt and persuaded her to move back home, where she's preparing to apply for law school. The mother asked that her name not be used to avoid embarrassing her daughter.
As many of you know and have pointed out on this blog, competition for legal jobs is fierce, with many younger lawyers having trouble finding the kind of jobs that pay enough to allow them to service their ever increasing student debt loads. Hopefully it will work out for this young woman, but it's not always the best plan to treat the law as a safe haven in an economic storm.
