Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you don’t have to.
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My younger brother has been trying to make it in the music industry for years now. He finally decided that he wants to get a “real” job and he’s taking the LSAT. But he doesn’t seem to want to be a lawyer, either. It seems like he’s just applying to law school because he doesn’t know what else to do. Whenever I ask him about what schools he’s interested in or what he wants to do with his degree, he just says, “Be a lawyer!” I’m worried that he’s about to take on a ton of debt without a plan. But whenever I’ve mentioned this, he gets angry.
Part of the problem is that we’re in different financial positions. We have different dads (his biological dad is my stepdad), and my biological father was able to provide me with more financial support than he grew up with, including help paying for my education. As a result, my brother gets prickly whenever I try to bring up how much law school costs. He’s like, “Well, you wouldn’t know.” He doesn’t think I can relate to what it’s like to struggle for money. But I still think that he should try to work in a law-related field before he takes out a big loan to go to a shitty law school that might not even get him a good job afterward. How can I say this in a way that he can hear?
Sometimes it sucks to be right. Would it be a good idea for your brother to take your advice and try a law-related job (say, as a paralegal) before he stakes his future on law school? Of course. But I can understand why he’s resisting — he’s looking for a path forward that will provide stability, and you’re telling him it might not work out. Of course he doesn’t want to hear that. And from what you’ve shared, it sounds like he particularly doesn’t want to hear it from you.
To figure out how you can help, I asked several financial experts to weigh in. Here are your options.
“Unsolicited advice can easily land as criticism,” says Elana Feinsmith, a certified financial therapist and financial planner based in California. “In situations like this, one of the most powerful things you can do is step back and allow him to walk his own path, while staying open and supportive if he turns to you for guidance.”
Sure, your brother might hate being a lawyer and, despite making more money than he did as a musician, will struggle to pay off his student debt. (A part of him surely knows this already.) But you could also be wrong. Suppose your brother loves law school, passes the bar on his first try, and settles into a fancy job at a law firm a few months after he graduates. Even though he’ll be paying off his debt for a while, he’ll be in good company. (A recent survey from the American Bar Association indicated that it typically takes lawyers between 10 and 20 years to pay off their loans, depending on the amount and what sector they work in.) It’s an expensive gamble, but it could work out — and if it doesn’t, “I told you so” won’t help.
Your second option — and the one that sounds like you want — is to help your brother make a more informed choice. Before you try this, you might want to get familiar with the law-school numbers yourself. So, here goes: The average cost of attending law school is $217,480 total — $138,088 in tuition and $79,391 in living expenses for two years — according to the Education Data Initiative. Then, assuming your brother wants to practice law, he’ll have to take the bar exam, which can cost another $2,000 to $7,000 or more depending on what state he’s in, the test prep he needs, and other random fees and expenses. Now for the good news: At the end of all this, he’ll be very employable. Last year, 93 percent of law-school graduates found jobs within ten months of finishing school, according to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), and the unemployment rate of recent law-school graduates reached a record low of about 5 percent.
Your brother should also be aware of what kind of money newbie lawyers make. The national median first-year lawyer salary is about $95,000, with those at law firms making closer to $155,000, per the NALP. These numbers are nothing to sniff at, of course, but are they worth $200,000 in debt? These are questions your brother will need to ask himself — or bounce off of you, if he’s comfortable doing so.
Farnoosh Torabi, host of the podcast So Money and author of A Healthy State of Panic, is no stranger to talking her younger siblings out of making questionable financial choices. “It helps to lead with curiosity, not finite opinions,” she says. “Ask questions that invite your brother to share his own thinking. For example: What excites him about law school? Has he spoken to lawyers about their day-to-day life? If money weren’t a factor, would he still choose this path? Often, hearing himself answer will reveal more than anything you could say.”
You could also ask about the opportunity cost. “What else could he do with the $200,000 and three years of his life? Posing the question without judgment can spark more creative and less defensive thinking,” she says.
Above all, make sure he knows that you’re on his team. “You’re not trying to stop him from becoming a lawyer. You’re trying to make sure he’s not saddled with debt if it’s not truly what he wants,” Torabi adds. She recommends saying something like, “My hope for you is that you never feel stuck in a situation, but that you feel you have options.”
You mentioned that your brother might resent the fact that your father was able to provide you with more financial support when you were growing up. But have you ever actually talked about it? This seems like a good time to hash it out — money is an emotional topic. “Your brother’s frustration may be less about law school and more about feeling misunderstood,” says Megan McCoy, a professor of financial planning at Kansas State University. “Naming that directly — ‘I know our situations have been different, and I don’t pretend to fully understand your challenges, but I care about your happiness and don’t want you to feel trapped by debt’ — acknowledges his perspective while still expressing concern.”
At the end of the day, you have limited power over your brother’s life. A better use of your energy is to ask what kind of support he’d like from you. “Does he want encouragement as he prepares for the LSAT? Does he want a sounding board for exploring different law schools?” suggests Feinsmith. If you know any lawyers, you could offer to connect him to them — but keep the emphasis on offer. “This approach makes it his choice, not your directive,” she says. Alternatively, he might not want you breathing down his neck at all, in which case you can provide a welcome distraction when he needs it.
Ultimately, the decision to take on debt for law school is your brother’s to make. It’s clear that you care about him and don’t want to see him make a costly and painful mistake, but he’s the one who will have to deal with the consequences.
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