$53k? Starting salaries for a PD/SA is $40k in FL

I picked $300k as the high end of plausible student loan debt for a law student.

As GodJr notes, not every state pays PDs 53k, and my classmates would primarily be working in Florida. I suspect that stuff scales with cost of living pretty neatly.

It sounds like the program works for you, and personally I'm very seriously considering going into it myself. It was designed as a way to allow people with 6 figures of debt to plausibly serve as PDs, JAG, prosecutors, etc. Without this program those career options were essentially off the table, not they are financially viable. It works at that.

But it's not a great windfall for people, and my classmates were all so enamored of the idea of getting a HUGE FORGIVENESS BONUS without doing the math.

yeah I just wanted to point out that it is a pretty huge bonus for me, and I didn't get that you got that from your post. For people with the full ride of loans, the program is HUGE.

A lot of states don't pay 53k to start (I'm kinda estimating, I forget how much it is). FL supposedly has a pretty good PD system in place btw. However CA pays between 45k-80k depending on the county(this was discussed on here, I forget what the upper end is). DC supposedly pays in the 70s.

The way I look at it is the benefit pays me an extra 30k or so. That would double a lot of people's Salary in the public sector.

Also I don't think anyone has 300k of loans, it should be like around 200k. However as I was saying, you have to look at the taxes of all this, and that makes it HUGE.

Personally I'm looking forward to making the equivalent of upper 80k and working much less hours than a firm, while doing work that's fun and that I actually want to do.

It is a HUGE bonus, if you have a lot of loans. You can also roll in stafford loans from college into it which is another 10k for me I think.

As an FYI, here's the pay scale for the Metropolitan Public Defender in Portland:

Attorney Annual Wage Scale:

Start
$41,264.08
6 mos
$43,747.08
1 Yr
$45,529.38
2 Yrs
$48,202.44
3 Yrs
$51,123.80
4 Yrs
$53,285.44
5 Yrs
$55,549.52
6 Yrs
$57,930.60
7 Yrs
$60,413.60
8 Yrs
$63,028.16
9 Yrs
$65,774.54

What school and what type of law. I don't care who you are if you're in Harvard or Duke law, it's not easy. Unless your on all sorts of methamphetamines, the research/reading is unbearable. I would say engineering is as or more difficult.

wat

lol

1L doing summer start here. It's just one class, torts. How important is it to brief every case and remember key points of the cases? Being that I'm just taking one class and not working, I have the time to do this, but I'm more concerned with how much studying effort I should put into it when working toward the exam. Do case details end up mattering that much?

Thinking about going to law school next fall and I am interested in going into Intellectual Property law. Are there any websites out there that could point me in the direction of schools that have good programs/courses in this field? Thanks.

Summer start? Sucker

Anyway, for the first couple weeks brief stuff and remember facts, just to get used to it.

By the end you'll realize it's not the facts that matter, but their holdings and decisions and go from there. It's a learning process. I sucked at it my first year, it takes some time.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=intellectual+property+law+schools

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsa...l-property-law

takin torts exam next week. Its good for you as a new student to get used to briefing so do it, but just like manupod said, the holding and some basic facts are really all that matter and you will brief less as time passes. And you really need to know the elements of the rules so that you can construct your exam essays properly. i.e. Negligence: duty, breach, causation, damages. gl.

Thanks. I found the second one but was just a little foggy on the criteria by which these schools were ranked. Guess it is a decent start though. Thanks again.

just so you know, specialty rankings mean basically zero -- overall rank >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> IP rank

Taking one class in the summer and going out drinking with classmates frequently is SO much better than working that crappy job for a couple more months.

I appreciate the input on briefing.