In its latest report regarding higher education’s return on investment (ROI), Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce (CEW) has analyzed 186 law schools and found at nearly one-in-five law schools, graduates’ net take-home pay after student loan payments averages at $55,000. Four years after completing law school, students still owe roughly $120,000 in student loans.
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In its latest report regarding higher education’s return on investment (ROI), Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce (CEW) has analyzed 186 law schools and found at nearly one-in-five law schools, graduates’ net take-home pay after student loan payments averages at $55,000. Four years after completing law school, students still owe roughly $120,000 in student loans.
These findings indicate that some of the most expensive law schools in the country also offer some of the best ROI as their graduates go on to work in bigger law firms that offer higher paychecks. Graduates of Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Cornell University, Stanford University, Harvard University, and Northwestern University have a median earning net of debt at or above $200,000. Their bar passage rate after graduation is 97%. But these institutions are responsible for educating only 20% of all legal students.
Catherine Morris, senior editor and writer at CEW and co-author of the report.
While Morris added that the findings in “A Law Degree is No Sure Thing” show that law school enrollments generally reflect the demographics of selective undergraduate institutions, there are complications in those findings, especially when considering Black, Latinx, Native American, and female graduates. While more women and minoritized populations have applied to law schools than ever before, the field of practicing lawyers remains majority white and majority male, particularly at high-paying firms.
Morris said that schools with the highest percentage of Latinx, Black, and female students also have the lowest net earning median.
“These schools are providing an important access point to a legal education, and we don’t want them to not make that available. But it does seem that outcomes around issues of bar passage tend to be worse for graduates of those schools. When you go to law school but don’t pass the bar, and you have high debt, that’s not ideal,” said Morris, a former reporter for Diverse. “In terms of resolving these issues, you have to kind of look back to the pipeline. It gets back to K-12, and general pipeline issues for which there seems to be no easy remedy.”
The report notes that the difficulty in paying off debt might limit graduates’ career options, particularly those taking legal courses with no intent to practice.
Shirley Jefferson, vice president of community engagement, government relations and professor of law at Vermont Law School, said that many diverse students may choose to attend a school that comes with a lower price tag because they are “already coming into law school with debt that’s not really based on student loans.”
Shirley Jefferson, vice president of community engagement, government relations and professor of law at Vermont Law School.
In ruminating on their potential earnings, Jefferson said these students might take into account the data presented in this new report, which shows how much they might earn in comparison with other demographics. By studying enrollment and net earnings data from 2020 to 2022 across all American Bar Association (ABA) accredited institutions, CEW found that 28% of white women and men earn six figures or more after debt payments, while only 5% of Asian men, 7% of Asian women, 3% of Black men, 4% of Black women, 4% of Latinx men, and 6% of Latinx women earn at that level. Zero percent of Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders are able to earn that much after debt payments.
Jefferson said that institutions should be aware of this kind of inequity and make more scholarships available for those who come into their institutions with lower GPAs or LSAT scores, particularly as race-based scholarships and need-based scholarships are phased out.
“They should start spreading the money through everybody, from the lowest [LSAT score] to the highest,” said Jefferson.
Resources, she added, are the key to understanding why students do or do not pass the bar right away. Students learn in different ways and come from different backgrounds—it’s why she encourages a holistic assessment of potential students and a more equal distribution of funds and support to get all students, not just those with resources attending highly-selective institutions, past the finish line and into their dream careers.
Liann Herder can be reached at lherder@diverseeducation.com.
