If you look at the payment as a $10,000 a year retainer fee in tthe public defenders office, it looks a lot better.
If I were a newley graduated lawyer (and I'm not even a lawyer) I would want to get out there and get the big bucks to pay off my debt. You can't do that in the public defenders office.
Look at it another way.... The government is paying kids fresh out of high school $60,000 to enlist in the Army for 3 years. Granted, the lawyers have already graduated from college, but both the high school graduate and the lawyer are being incentivized to go into public service.
I don't know, but digging deeper into this subject, it is not as shocking as it seems.
However, this thread is enough for a lawyer joke:
What is the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?
One is a bottom feeding scum sucker.....The other is a fish.
Minor correction - the Army might offer UP TO $60,000 to a high school graduate who enlists in the Army in certain specialties, for periods up to SIX years.
My son has enlisted (delayed enlistment) in the Army. Although he had very high ASVAB scores, and could enter any specialty field, he wanted to go Airborne, and have a chance to be a Ranger. He signed up for 5 years, and his bonus, payable upon completion of training - is a mere $15,000.
(Yes - he could have gotten $60,000 if he had signed up for Navy - Nuclear power training, submarine duty, for a 6 year commitment - but he didn't want anything remotely resembling a desk job.)
As to the proposal to give up to $60,000 for paying off school debt .... I am totally opposed to it!!! They get too much money - without being that beneficial to society. Maybe if it came included with a "looser pays" so that frivilous lawsuits carry a certain penalt, plus other means of "policing" their profession, to return "ethics" to the legal profession - then only then it might be worth considering...
Mike
"You can't do that in the public defenders office.
"
Bull crap. The story says that PDs make $50,000 a year. if you can't start paying off your loans with that then you shouldn't have bothered!
Cops make LESS than that but every cop is being required to have college these days. THEY have to pay off THEIR loans too!