New research reveals that 40% of law school’s financial aid offices recommend students borrow less than the living wage for the county they are located in. Relatedly, approximately 90% of law students rely on student loans to fund their degrees. As a result, law schools drive many of their students who must rely on student loans into poverty.
Making matters worse, the living expenses calculations of financial aid offices are based on cost-of-living calculations for nine months. In other words, public interest-minded students must fend for themselves over the summer. Students may have access to summer funding but this is far from an absolute.
However, before students can even think of a summer placement, they must succeed in the law school environs and if they rely on borrowing recommendations, they may struggle to afford food, housing, transportation, internet, etc. Data on law student access to “basic needs” is limited but early results are startling. The 2021 LSSSE Survey revealed that 43% of law students reported concern about having enough food to eat and 29% of law students reported concerns over losing housing.
For students to thrive in law school and while working in coalition with clients and communities, they must be able to meet their basic needs. Individual faculty have tools and strategies to combat basic needs insecurity and promote wellness both in and out of the classroom and as clinicians, we are ever mindful of the structural drivers of inequity. As such, in addition to sharing our strategies, this panel will turn its attention to and facilitate dialogue around the absence of student loan oversight, the role of US News rankings, the failings of the ABA Standard 508, and the impact of Students for Fair Admissions Inc. in steering students away from careers in the public interest.