Affiliation:
1. Institute for Social Science Research University of Massachusetts, Amherst Amherst Massachusetts USA
2. Department of Sociology Dartmouth College Hanover New Hampshire USA
3. Student Research & Assessment Pennsylvania State University State College Pennsylvania USA
4. Department of Criminology, Law and Society University of California Irvine California USA
Abstract
AbstractDespite the absence of strong empirical evidence to support the relationship, legal scholars have long argued that a model of financing legal education through student debt makes it difficult, if not impossible, for most students to take seriously a career path in government and public interest (GPI) law, where salaries are generally lower than private, corporate practice. Drawing from a multiwave, panel survey of law students, we take advantage of a unique tuition remission intervention that occurred at the founding of University of California Irvine (UCI) Law, resulting in a natural, quasi‐experiment. Using ordinary least squares regression and an instrumental variables approach, we ask whether law student debt influences the likelihood that students will (1) launch their careers in the GPI and (2) aspire to the GPI sector 5 years after graduation. We find little to no evidence that student debt is a barrier to a graduate's decision to take a position in the GPI sector at career launch or that debt is a factor in a graduate's career aspirations at UCI law school during the study period. These counterintuitive findings provoke new questions about our understanding of debt in the context of legal education and the types of interventions that might facilitate greater entry into the public sector.
Reference65 articles.
1. Young, Black, and (Still) in the Red: Parental Wealth, Race, and Student Loan Debt
2. Making public interest lawyers in a time of crisis: An evidence‐based approach;Albiston C.;Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics,2021
3. American Academy of Arts & Sciences. (2016).The crisis in legal education.https://www.amacad.org/news/crisis-legal-education
4. American Bar Association. (2003).Lifting the burden: Law student debt as a barrier to public service—The final report of the ABA Commission on Loan Repayment and Forgiveness.https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_aid_indigent_defendants/ls_sclaid_lrap_finalreport.pdf