Citing the high cost of attending law school in the United States today, the American Bar Association has called on the federal government to suspend or forgive certain lawyers’ student loans, and is co-sponsoring a “Student Debt Week of Action” this week to lobby Congress “for additional student loan debt relief.” Unmentioned in this advocacy, however, is that the ABA and its member associations in states across the country are at least partially responsible for the extreme tuition and debt levels that today’s law school graduates must incur.
It’s undoubtedly true that law school tuition and related student loan debt have increased in recent years. Since 1985, for example, inflation-adjusted public law school tuition for in-state students and out-of-state students has quintupled and more than tripled, respectively. Over the same period, tuition at private universities has more than doubled. (See Figure 1.)
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