For the majority of law students, a low-paying public interest career can feel daunting in the face of burdensome student loans. At Harvard Law School, prospective students, current students, and alumni are invited to set those worries aside. HLS students pursuing public interest are, supposedly, not forced to choose between a cushy corporate gig or financial ruin; they can instead rely on HLS’s Low Income Protection Plan (LIPP). Like the loan repayment assistance programs (LRAPs) at peer schools, LIPP provides financial assistance to HLS graduates who take on low-paying jobs after law school. According to HLS’s own informational page on LIPP, its mission is “to enable HLS J.D. graduates to pursue a broad range of relatively lower income employment options while maintaining the ability to repay their student loans.” LIPP was “the first law school program to address [the problem of burdensome debt for those working in lower-paying positions] and remains one of the most comprehensive programs of its kind.”
Those words, unfortunately, paint a much rosier picture of the program than what HLS alumni say they experience today. The program has not updated the salary scale that determines what repayment assistance HLS will provide in over three years, while inflation and rent prices have skyrocketed in that same time. That stagnation makes it difficult for alumni to cover living costs, let alone build up savings, with what remains of their salaries after loan payments. On Twitter, Alumni have described the program as a “scam” that “keeps poor students poor for 10 years” and as “punish[ing to] alums from low-income backgrounds.” These statements are especially frustrating given the kinds of careers those on LIPP pursue. Though there is no explicit requirement that one be a public interest lawyer to receive LIPP (unlike LRAPs at most other schools, the program is solely income-based), in practice, the alumni in need of LIPP assistance are almost always pursuing public interest careers. They work in areas of justice, such as public defense and legal aid. As one alum put it, LIPP makes it tough to pursue “the only legal careers that *don’t* profit off of exploiting low-income people.”
But it is much harder to pursue a transformative legal career when you find yourself overburdened by debt. That backdrop led a group of recent alumni, including Brendan Schneiderman JD ’21, to pen a letter to Dean Manning this month demanding that the law school follow through on its promise and increase LIPP assistance. In an interview with The Record, Schneiderman cited the state of the economy as a major reason for taking action now. “The runaway inflation we’re seeing right now, without meaningful changes in the wages of public interest students, means that LIPP is falling behind the actual cost of living for alumni,” he noted. As the letter indicates, consumer prices rose 7% in 2021 and rents rose an average of 14% nationally (and as much as 40% in some cities, like New York). Amidst all this, BigLaw firms and other higher-paying employers have been offering raises and hardship bonuses, said Schneiderman. But “public interest students, especially low-earning students, have been left in the dust.”
Schneiderman described the experience as “shocking,” in particular for students at the world’s wealthiest institution who would have reason to expect more meaningful support. As a member of the JD class of 2021, he and his classmates were suddenly kicked out of their dorms in March 2020 and transitioned into virtual learning without any tuition reduction or other meaningful financial support. Meanwhile, the Harvard University endowment has grown by billions. What’s more, noted Schneiderman, the federal student loan payment pause and interest freeze has led to a “windfall of cash” that HLS has not had to spend on loan payments. “But rather than pass that money on to the people it was intended for,” said Schneiderman, “Harvard is holding onto it.” The silence has not gone unnoticed. Schneiderman is frustrated that HLS has not offered any public statement about how they plan to reallocate that windfall, nor has Student Financial Services reached out privately to beneficiaries of LIPP.
Even after sending their letter on April 8th to Dean Manning, the LIPP office, and Assistant Dean for Student Financial Services Natasha Onken, Schneiderman and his colleagues have not received any direct response from the HLS administration. The only thing so far resembling a response has been a statement given by HLS spokesperson Jeff Neal for an April 15th piece in The Harvard Crimson about the letter—and it did not seriously respond to the substance of the letter, instead only reiterating HLS’s general commitment to supporting their graduates’ freedom to choose between careers.
But there is reason to be hopeful. The first iteration of the letter has over 100 signatories; since publication, Schneiderman and his colleagues have received interest from many other students and alumni who now hope to sign on as well. “It feels organic in a way that past campaigns have not,” he explained. Schneiderman also believes Harvard Law’s recent drop in the U.S. News & World Report rankings will put pressure on the administration to change things. “That’s definitely something that they’re going to be mindful of,” he said, noting that “student borrowing” and “per-student expenditures” are factors considered in those rankings.
Most promising, though, might be the recent win by the campaign among HLS students to raise Summer Public Interest Funding (SPIF). After concerted student efforts, most centrally the proliferation of a student letter with over 200 signatories, the HLS administration on March 11th of this year significantly raised the amount that students pursuing public interest summer jobs are eligible to receive. It is no stretch to think that a similar campaign aimed at improving LIPP could have success.
Indeed, there is already evidence that an LRAP does not have to be so burdensome. As one Columbia Law School grad opined on Twitter: “[W]hen I found out how much friends were paying on their loans compared to me (thousands per year more!), I was honestly shocked.” Harvard University is the wealthiest educational institution in the world; there is no financial reason for it to offer its students less than its peers offer.
Ultimately, the costs of LIPP’s limitations are felt not in grand numbers or statistics, but in human terms. Schneiderman spoke of one friend working as a public defender in New York City who is “struggling just to live comfortably,” and another friend “struggling not to live paycheck to paycheck.” Practicing public interest law under the current LIPP program, it seems, requires staggering tenacity. As Schneiderman put it: “These are people who are doing really hard work, doing it because they believe in the work, and HLS is just not supporting them.”
Marty Strauss is a 2L at Harvard Law School and the current Editor-in-Chief of The Harvard Law Record. He plans to pursue a public interest career after graduation.
You can read the letter that this article discusses here and sign on if you so wish here.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that HLS has not updated the LIPP salary scale in two years. It has actually not been updated in over three years.
Correction: They haven’t updated the contribution since January 2019, which is 3+ years ago.