Mm-hm. All right. Good afternoon. I am still emitting some people into the, in from the waiting room. So I think we'll wait just a minute or two here and let a few more people collect before we get started. Thanks for joining us and we'll get started here in just a minute. Okay. Alright. Well, it's 4:47. We might still have some people join in, but I think I'd like to get started so that we can end on time. Thank you for joining us today for this workshop which we call Financing your Legal Education. And this is really going to be a discussion of the financing issues that you're facing as your considering law school and attending law school. It's meant as sort of a an introduction to the finance questions you might be facing. I'm going to apologize in advance for the amount of information on these slides. I'm doing this in part because I think you might want to use this as a reference tool that you look back on later will be, will be recording this session. And, and it'll be available if you need to sort of go back and look at some of the tools that we're talking about. Although there is a lot of information to get through, I'm very, very happy to answer questions. And so I think just kind of based on the number of people that will be in the, in the workshop, it might be best to submit the questions in chat. I will try to keep up with them. And if I don't capture... but if I don't answer them during the course of the the original presentation, we'll try to get to those at the end. So we'll go ahead and get started now. And again, please don't hesitate to ask questions as we're as we're going on. Alright, first of all, so let me introduce myself. My name is Greg Foster. I am the Pre-law and Pre- Graduate School Advisor for Cornell Career Services. I'm currently also serving as the Interim Executive Director for the Office. Prior to coming to Cornell about 3.5 years ago. I worked as a lawyer. I was a trial lawyer for about 20 years and then I was general counsel for a sports promotion firm. That I founded and came to Cornell after moving on from that company. So I've had an opportunity to kinda see both sides of the fence here, both as a practicing lawyer and also as a pre-law advisor. Okay. Before we dive into that topic today, and I always like to start workshops off with of... kind of a discussion of the Cornell Career Services model. Basically how we think about career development and applying to law school and attending law school is definitely part of career development. Basically, what we think is that a person's career hat really is in a cycle, constantly involved in a cycle. Really from the time that you enter University until the time that you retire. We think there are three phases in the cycle. The first is to Understand Yourself, knowing your interests, your values, your strengths, and your goals. And the second is to Explore Your Options. Once you Understand Yourself, what are the resources that you can use to explore your options? Can you do networking to, to conduct that exploration? What about activities here at Cornell? Internships? Look into ways to research what's available to you given what you think you want to do. And then the final step is Taking Action. And that really just is applying for something. Maybe maybe in our case today, it's about applying the law school. And I would say that today's discussion is mainly in the Take Action phase. We're really going to be talking about while you're applying how to make the most of the financial aid that might be a available and also how to manage the debt that many, many, many people incur in order to get a legal education. Alright. The debt that you might incur is scary. And sometimes it can really be a barrier to pursuing the kind of career, the want to getting that law degree. And so I think to, to maybe cast this in the right and the right phraseology. I'd like to talk about law school more as an investment than a cost. And so what are we talking about when we're talking about investments? Is the outlay of money. Hopefully for income or profit is one type of investment. Another type is sort of the, the devoting we're using or giving of your time or talent or emotional energy for a purpose or to achieve something. And that really is what you're going to be doing in going to law school. You want to become a lawyer. You're gonna have to go to law school to make that happen. This investment, like any other investment, is going to involve some speculation and some risk. And the expectations that you have for your return on this investment are really personal to you. And so as you're looking at paying for law school, financing it, you always want to bring it down to what your needs are. It can be tempting to kind of look around and see what other people are doing. But really, at the end of the day, the way that you pay for law school has got to work for you. Alright. So today really we're going to be having kind of a financial aid primer for making it through three years of law school. Alright, our goals today will be first to understand how to make financial decisions about law school. We're going to talk about the important financial aid products that are available. We're going to learn about how to optimize merit aid. Basically get as much merit aid as you can possibly get. We're also going to talk about repayment of your loans. And what are the programs that are out there that hopefully you can rely on to pay off these loans. And finally, we're going to look at some big picture financing issues that law students often need to confront. All right, let's start at the very basic level. They're really kind of two kinds of a need aid and merit aid. Need-based aid is what it sounds like. It's basically available to help people who cannot otherwise afford their legal education, get the money they need, for that education. It's going to be based on a review of the money available to you, the assets that you might have. Law schools will also take a look at at a maybe your parents financial situation in the same way that they did for undergraduate. But, but they will often take a look at that to determine your need. Another type of aid is merit-based aid. And this really comes down to scholarships that law schools are willing to pay based on what they believed to be the merit of your application to the law school. And we'll talk about that a lot, a lot more here in a minute. And sometimes merit-based aid and need-based aid kind of feel like they're both being considered at the same time by the law school. And I think that for some law schools, that's true. So sometimes both of those sources of aid are being reviewed by a law school and we'll talk a little bit about what that means. One of the other things I'd highlight right now is with aid packages that you might be offered, it's very important to no more than the dollar figure that they're offering. You also want to know what are the terms and conditions of that dollar figure. Does it get renewed every year automatically or do you have to meet some standards for it to be renewed every year? Obviously, it's better if it's renewed automatically because if you do have to need some standards to get the renewal and you don't meet them. All of a sudden, you could be in a difficult financial situation to continue with your studies. One other topic we're going to talk a little about today is negotiating awards. That often is, is more likely to occur with merit-based aid. And we'll, we'll talk about some strategies around that along the way. Alright, on fact, we'll talk about in this next slide. Okay, so let me just try to create a little bit of context for this. So let's say you apply to ten law schools, and you get answers from three law schools. And all three of them say, welcome to our law school. We're admitting you. And along with that, they make a financial aid offer. And one of them, let's just say offers $50 thousand. Another one operas a $100 thousand, another $150 thousand. You want to try to candidly get every last dollar that you can out of that financial aid offer. And so there's a process that many law schools are willing to go through that we call reconsideration of your financial aid offer. And that really can be an opportunity to go back to the law school once you have that offer and say... Hey, I really appreciate the money you're offering me and I'd like to come to your school and I think, I think your school and I are a good fit. However, these two other schools that are similar to your school, have offered me more money. Would you be willing to reconsider my financial aid offer? En-light of those other offers from those other schools. That's, that's sometimes a way to get the target school to make a larger financial aid offer. And it's a process now that's, that's quite common. And something that you'll probably be looking at when you're applying to law schools. And typically, what you want to do in that situation is disclose the offers you've gotten at the other law schools to your target law school, along with the cost of attendance at each of those schools. And then ask them to reconsider how much money they're offering you. That's a really broad overview. I wanted to tell you that Cornell Pre-law Advisors are here to help with that process. So please do not hesitate to contact me or other Pre-law Advisors across campus to work through that. And just know that that's that's going to be a normal process, normal part of your application process. Alright, a few resources that you can take advantage of when you're going through a negotiation of financial aid offers. You definitely want to know what it costs to attend each law school you've been admitted to. Luckily, the law schools have to publish that information. So one way to get that information is to go to the law school website itself and look for their cost of attendance. Another maybe easier way. As you can check out this article that I've linked at the top of the slide. Here it's a big la investor article, which basically has the cost of attendance broken down by tuition and room and board where every law school in the country. And that can be a really good way for you to compare the cost of law schools. But also when you want to negotiate financial aid, that can be the source of the cost of attendance that you, that you use when you, when you communicate with the law schools. it's also important um, as you're thinking about how much data am I willing to take on? How much financial aid I should I really be pushing for? It's important to know what it will cost to pay off the debt that you'll be taking on. I'm a big fan. Those calculators. And one of them that I like is this a Nerd Wallet link that I've that I've set forth here near the top this side as well. That's a really helpful tool for figuring out just how much does this loan, I'm going to take out costs me over the life of the loan. Also, when you're thinking about negotiating financial aid offers, it's not bad to think about how the law schools feel about that process. They know it's coming. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they are happy to have to offer you more money. And so you might want to take a look at this article that I've linked here. It's published by the University of Illinois, the Law School at the University of Illinois. And it offers sort of their, their view, the negotiating process. Got some do's and don'ts here for negotiating financial aid. You can see them on the side. But basically, if there is a process that law schools ask you to follow for reconsideration of your financial aid offer. Definitely follow it. Need to also decide for yourself how much you're able and willing to pay for your education before you ask for reconsideration. So you know what your target is. Obviously, when you talking with the law schools, particularly on something delicate like money, you want to conduct yourself professionally. We wanna be prepared, courteous. The proposal you send them should be well crafted. And you should also consider that is sort of still part of your application. They're, they're reviewing that potentially too. And be sure when he asked them for more money, that you show a strong interest in this school. Because they basically will want to know, well, if we offer this person more money, is that going to result in them attending our school. Don't s, these are important to. Don't ignore specific instructions for how to contact the school about scholarships. Definitely follow what they, the process they ask for. Obviously, don't be demanding or difficult. That won't work. I don't expect anyone in this, in this workshop to be that way, but, but that certainly does happen in some situations. Um, and, and just know that a full ride for law school also is unusual. So that you'll want to do a little bit of expectation setting for yourself before you go into this process. And again, the Pre-law advisors at Cornell would be very happy to kind of walk you through this when it's time. Alright. Setting aside the negotiation, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to end up needing to borrow some money to go to law school. So what kind of loans are typical for law school? Typically, you're going to be looking at federal loans and two kinds of federal loans, specifically - Direct Loans and Direct Grad Plus Loans. There are other loans available like private loans. There are some challenges with private loans and make them a lot less attractive. And we'll talk about them in a little bit. We also did just cover the, the idea of grants and scholarships and fellowships. Those are part of those financial aid packages you might be negotiating. But for today, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about the nature of those federal loans and, and how they get paid back. Alright. First of all, the requirements for federal loans. It's important to be aware that first of all, and this can be difficult information for, for international students. In order to be eligible for federal loan, one has to be a U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident. You also do have to complete a FAFSA. You probably had to do that for entering the University in the first place. You'll be doing that again. You gotta be registered with Selective Service. And if you've been convicted of a federal drug offense while you're in college, that may, that may complicate receiving a federal student loan. Alright. It's important to realize that unlike when you entered college. As a graduate or professional student and law students are professional students. Financially, you are now considered to be independent of your parents. And so while you will be evaluated based in part on, on your financial information... some law schools are still going to be asking you about your, your parents financial situation. And that can come down to help. And basically that helps them evaluate some of the need-based aid that they might provide. So just know that while you are independent, some schools are still going to be asking about your parents financial situation. Alright, we won't spend a whole lot of time on FAFSA. Just know that you're going to have to go through that process again. You need to complete it each year that you're in law school. You can specify up to ten schools. And it again is limited unfortunately to U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents only. The tax year data that you'll be supplying if you're filling out a FAFSA... I'm sorry, I heard somebody speak up. I don't know if there was a question. Okay. Maybe not. Maybe just the accidental mute button incident. Alright. So for filling out the FAFSA in 2021-2022, you'll be relying on 2019 tax sharing data. Okay. We talked a little bit about cost of attendance. And this may not be a term that, that everybody's familiar with. Basically, every law school has to publish a cost of attendance. And if you get an even just $1 in federal aid, that amount of money that you get cannot exceed the total cost of attendance of this law school you'd be going to. And each school establishes their own cost of attendance. So that's going to be a figure you're going to want to get to know as you're planning, planning, finance, finances for law school. This is basically what cost of attendance is made up of. There's maybe a few things in here that you wouldn't have expected. Like the cost of equipment for a computer. But this is a this is supposed to be an all-inclusive, reasonably all-inclusive estimate of what it costs for you to attend a particular law school. Alright. Now, once you take out the loans, obviously, you're going to have to pay them back. And it's important to understand when repayment starts and how you're going to be repaying the loans. So there's a number of different ways that repayment happens. And a lot of those methods are kind of kind of come down to your ability to repay the loans. And sometimes you're the type of employment, you have. So you can see the five typical repayment options for federal loans. The Standard Plan, an Extended Plan, Graduated Plan, Income Driven Plans, and Income Sensitive Plans. So we're going to go through some of those repayment plans right now. And this will hopefully give you a sense for once you've got that that lump of financial or that lump of debt you've gotta pay off. How are you going to accomplish that? Alright. So again, two kinds of federal lands that are out there. Federal Direct Student Loan and the Grad Plus Loan. So with regard to the Federal Direct Student Loan, this is what it is. And it is an unsubsidized loan. It means that interest accrues during the course the loan, it can be deferred under certain circumstances. That means it can be your repayment of it can can be delayed under some circumstances. You can get $20,500 annually. There are, the current interest rate for a Federal Direct Student Loan in 2020-2021 is 4.3% it's dropped pretty significantly this year. Because it tends to track the 10-year treasury note, and that has fallen since last year. There is an origination fee, which means that on top of the amount of money that you're borrowing for your own use, there's going to be another, 1.057 tacked on to the amount you've gotta pay off. That's a fee that gets paid to the bank or the entity that is servicing alone. There's gonna be a new rate for loans for the 2021- 2022 period. That new rates can be established in July. And again, it's, it's really tied to a 10-year Treasury note. We don't know what that rate will be yet until July arrives. Alright, so the Federal Grad Plus Loan, this is sort of what we might call a bridge loan. So basically it makes up a gap. So for that amount that you need, that's over the Federal Direct Loan amount in order to get to the full cost of attendance at the law school. And you're going to use a Federal Grad Plus Loan. So basically, let's say you get $20 thousand loan, from a Direct loan from the government. And then you get some, some aid from the school and maybe get another 10 thousand. And let's say that the total amount of attendance cost of attendance for that year, say 55 thousand. The Grad Plus Loan is there to make up that difference. It's important to note that with the Grad Plus Loan, you can't get one unless you have good credit. And we'll talk a little bit about credit after this. The interest rate and the Grad Plus Loan is a little bit higher, 5.3%. It's also tied to the, to the 10-year Treasury note. So it'll change again in July as well. And unfortunately has a significantly higher origination fee. So rather than in a sort of 1% range for the Federal Direct Loan, this is, this is 4.23% basically. And again, that gets wrapped into your lung. And then you've gotta pay that off over the life of the loan. Alright. Um, Okay. We talked about needing to have good credit in order to get that Grad Plus Loan. A basically what that means is you've got to avoid some problems. And so those problems are actually spelled out on the website for for federal financing for student loans. And the language you're seeing on this slide is lifted directly from that website. So you need to make sure that you have debts below a certain level. And that you've avoided being placed in in collection or being delinquent on your debt. Um, other things that can complicate getting a Parent or a Grad Plus Loan. I listed down here... bankruptcy, foreclosure, repossession, tax lien, having written off other federal student debt. Those are, those are instances that can prevent you getting that Grad Plus Loan. So it's very important to, to be aware of your credit history and to take care of it. Alright. So how can you become aware of it? There are a number of different websites that you can go to to determine what your credit rating is and to see what's been reported, what negative reports exist. So these these links that I've listed here are, are useful in that regard. Equifax TransUnion in particular, do a lot of the credit reporting that are out there. And those are the sort of most direct sites for, for checking your credit. Um, you can Credit Karma. Sometimes Credit Karma is not fully accurate. Sometimes the information that they collect from Equifax TransUnion is a little dated. And so I would just caution you to not rely on only one site, but check out all of these sites. And I would start doing that now-ish rather than waiting until the time that you're applying for that. Because if you do want to try to cure something that's incorrect in your credit reports. And there are ways to do that, but it takes some time. So best to check now and, and, and make any effort you can to cure any issues that you're seeing. Alright. Another type of loan that's available are Private loans. And basically these are made by banks or some other lenders. They don't have some of the protections that federal loans have and, and many of those protections come in how you have to repay them. We're gonna explain that in a little bit. But what you're going to find first of all, is it is hard to find private loans. The upfront fees, like origination and guaranteed fees, might be significantly higher. The interest rate you will pay will almost certainly be significantly higher than a federal loan. It will definitely be based on your credit. Probably more aggressively than than the Parent and Grad Plus Loans are. And they are not dis-chargeable for death or disability were federal loans are, which means basically, let's say you become unable to work as a result of a disability. You may be able to get rid of your federal student loans based on that disability. But your not going to be able to get rid of the private ones. So basically, with the private loans, they're more expensive and you are personally taking on more risk. So if you can get the financing in law school done without going to private lands, that would be really a good idea. Alright. Another source of money in law school can be the Federal Work-Study Program. Many of you may already be participating in that Cornell as undergraduates. And if you do you understand that basically this is a way to subsidize the wages that an employer pays you. And so essentially the employee, you only cost the employer 25% of your wage and and the Federal Work-Study program makes up the other 75%. So you may be able to find, when you're in law school employment that benefits essentially from the Federal Work-Study program. One thing I would caution you is that during that first year law school until that first summer, it's really it's unlikely you're going to be able to work. And so this really comes into play beginning your first summer before first, second year of law school. Alright. So you've taken out the loans. You've gotten your degree. Now you have to repay the loans. How is that going to happen? And we're going to be talking here about the federal loans that I was discussing earlier. The Federal the Federal Direct Loan and the Grad Plus Loans. So basically, the standard repayment plan, sort of starting point for repaying your, your student loan is going to be a ten-year plan. And your payments, are going to be determined by essentially finding out how much money you owe and how much you'll have to pay on a monthly basis to pay it down to 0 after ten years. So that's the starting point. If you do nothing, you don't seek any other repayment plans and you just want to pay off your student loans. And the very most basic way, it'll happen over the course of ten years on a monthly basis. There are a number of other ways to to repay your federal loans, that are more sensitive to your income. And we're going to go over those as well. So Income Driven Payment Plans can set a monthly payment that, that essentially fits within your income and your cost of living, rather than focusing only on the balance of your loan. And they can do that by stretching out the term or the amount of time that you have to pay off your loan. That's one way that they can reduce your payments. So again, only federal loans are eligible for these plans. There are four that we'll cover today... Income-Based Repayment, Pay as You Earn, Revised Pay as You Earn, and Income Contingent Repayment. I'll just say as we're going through these, some of these are going to look the same. So you really kinda, kinda, kinda have to look at the, the details of the repayment terms to know why they're different. And again, this is more just to introduce you to these topics. I don't think you need to have a complete understanding of them after we're done today. I think this is something that you explore further once you decide on the amount of federal loans that you're going to be taking out. We might want to imagine how you're going to be repaying them. That's when you'll do a deeper dive into these different payment plans. Alright. So Income-Based Repayment, basically this caps payments at 10% of your discretionary income. So what does that mean? Basically, they'll be a formula for determining what your discretionary income should be based on your, your income from work and the cost of living, the you're experiencing where you, where you live. So this plan would cap your payment at 10% of that discretionary income number. So that's going to be significantly lower than the payment you would have if it was just a standard tenure payback period. And if you pay that loan down over the course of 20 years, if there's still a balance after 20 years, meaning you haven't paid enough of it off to, to get to a 0 balance. You can, the entire remaining balance after 20 years can be forgiven. So that, that's a nice, a nice benefit. This is available to borrowers who borrow the money after July 1, 2014. I think that'll be everybody everybody on this call. The federal loans that are where this Income-Based Prepayment plan is available are those that I've listed here. The Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans, Graduate Plus Loans, and a few other products that we're not really covering today. Ineligible federal loans. The Parent Plus Loans can't do Income-Based Repayment on Parent Plus Loans. So, so that's one form of repayment. The next is Pay as You Earn. This, again, is calculated at 10% of your discretionary income. For this in particular product. The payments that you would make under the plan have to be smaller than what they would be if you use the standard payment plan. So that it's a little bit of a twist from the previous plan. You can still get to forgiveness after 20 years. This is for loans that basically have been dispersed after, after October 1, 2011. I think everybody on this call is going to be is going to be eligible for, for this repayment plan. Then you have a Revised Pay as you Earn. Again, monthly payments capped at 10%. I told you these are going to look pretty similar. They do even as I'm going through them. However. Here, you can participate even if the monthly payments are higher than they would have been on a standard ten year plan. Now, I'm not exactly sure which scenarios would cause that to happen. But enough to do that there's actually a repayment plan for it. And as you begin to make more money, your payments will probably increase. So that's something to keep in mind for this plan. This plan also, has the possibility of forgiveness of the remaining balance. If you haven't paid it all off after 20 to 25 years. Alright, and the next one is Income, Income Contingent Repayment. I chose this image because this sort of is the last chance. This is the, the least attractive repayment plan other than standard payment. Your income is not, is not part of the calculus for whether you're eligible for the plan. Basically, you're usually looking at this plan if you've applied for other ones, but you've been rejected. You can see here the monthly payments are probably going to be higher than the other plans because they're capped at 20% of discretionary income. So this'll be a more expensive repayment plan on a monthly basis than the other ones. And again, there's an opportunity for forgiveness after 25 years. Alright. I know that I went quickly through these. Again, this is really more for awareness, then a deep understanding right now. But just know note that they're going to be a number of options for how you pay off your loans after you take them out. Alright. Some of these income based repayment plans will require you to demonstrate that you are actually experiencing economic hardship. Some require it, some don't. These two the Income-Based Repayment Plan, and the Pay as You Earn Plan, basically look at a calculation of how close your income is to a poverty line in your community. And then it reduces your payment if you're within the range that they, that they would expect. So you can see the details here. And this is again, I'm just introducing this topic, but just know that for some of the repayment plans, you are actually going to have to demonstrate economic hardship. Alright. Income-Driven Repayment does sometimes create a scenario where you are not fully paying off the interests that is accruing on your loan. So basically, you end up in a situation where your payment is so low that it doesn't pay off any of the principal of the loan, the balance of the loan, and it doesn't fully cover the interests that's due. That's not a great situation because basically then the interests that's due gets added to the amount that's owed and start paying interest on the interest. Usually not a situation you want to be in. I guess, if you're kind of holding out for forgiveness at the end of the loan and you're just trying to make it there. That could be a plan, but that forgiveness time frame is, is long- 20 to 25 years. So you need to be aware that if you end up in one of these income driven repayment plans. And you get a payment doesn't cover both the principal and the interest, that loan is getting more expensive for you over time. And that's, that's something to be cautious about. Alright. Loan Cancellation. This is the good news. These programs, as I mentioned, can all result in forgiveness between 20-25 years. For the point that the loan repayment has to start. That's great. And that's definitely something that if you're in that position, you want to try to take advantage of. Its important to note, though, that in many cases, debt that has been forgiven from a tax standpoint counts as income. And so you may actually have to pay some tax on the amount of debt that has been forgiven. So let's say that, you know, you get down, the 20-year period is going to be forgiven, but you still owe 10%. Let's say you're in a, I'm just making up numbers here. A 20% tax bracket. You may actually owe $2 thousand because $10 thousand has been forgiven. And that sort of a trap for the unwary and something to keep in mind when you're, when you're calculating forgiveness. Sorry, my slides are not advancing. Okay. Alright. Other, other ways to get to forgiveness. Many of you have probably heard about the Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. This can be a good deal. And the key here is to make sure that you are, that you actually qualify for this benefit. So essentially what this is is it's a way to help people financially who are taking full-time government or nonprofit jobs. In the federal government recognizes that and in some cases, the private market has higher compensation for similar work than government can offer or non-profits can offer. And so the federal government would like to make that more palatable, more attracted to students so they'll get into public service by reducing or forgiving the amount of student debt that they've incurred. So that's great. That's a great idea in theory. But you also have to pay attention in order to get to forgiveness. It's tenure process, a 120 months. You'd have to be working in a full-time position for a government or non-profit organization. You have to be a qualifying organization. So when you get that job, you want to ask them... Do you qualify for this? Working here is this a job that will qualify me for this Public Service Forgiveness Program? The next thing is, you gotta be in a qualifying repayment plan, which means, your repayment plan of you're loan, is, is basically-basically qualifies for this forgiveness program. And then you have to make sure that you're making those monthly payments, every month. If you do that, if you are working with a qualified employer and you're engaged in a qualified repayment plan and you make those monthly payments for a 120 months than you, your loan will be forgiven. At least that's the promise. In practice. This was supposed to start occurring. I think it was about two years ago, possibly three years ago. That was the that was ten years from the point where these loans were first or whether this program first began. So there would be a group of people who've been making these qualifying payments for a 120 months on the expectation that in month 121, the rest of the loan would be, would be forgiven. But unfortunately, the federal government did not process those quickly and often did not process those accurately. So many people did not get that forgiveness right away. My sense is that's improving. And this program should become more robust and more reliable. But I would caution you to maybe take a look at the history of the program. If you're thinking about public service work and you're trying to make that work financially by, by relying on forgiveness through this program. Alright. There's some pros and cons to this program. It's only applicable for federal loans, and it is only available using certain qualifying repayment plans. You need to have a 120 payments while you are in eligible employment, meaning you're in public service for a 120 months. They don't have to be consecutive months. You have to work for a 120 months and public service. And basically what you're looking at here, oh, there's one other benefit that forgiveness is not taxable. So we were talking about taxability before. That amount of money that's forgiven, you won't have to pay taxes. However, the trade-off is, you do have to commit to essentially ten years of public service. And that can impact your earnings. It can affect your professional growth because you're maybe not taking other jobs. And so there are some, there are some considerations to make for committing to to this kind of a plan. All right. One other kind of plan that really that really assist people who are interested in public service is a Loan Repayment Assistant Program, an LRAP. And basically what this is. Is it plan sponsored by law schools that basically pays, makes them monthly payments on student debt as long as the student or the graduate is working in public service. So essentially your law school is covering your loan payments as long as you're in public service. And that can be an amazing benefit for law schools. You can see a full listing of the LRAP Programs for every law school at this link that I've set forth here and in the end on a slide. And what I'll say is this, this is maybe this kinda goes to strategy as you're building your list to law schools. If you're someone who is interested in public service, as a lawyer, and you're looking at law schools. You'll see a lot of law schools say... Hey, we really care about public service. We have this great Clinic. We have a Law Journal that publishes work that relates to public service. And so you should come to our law school. Those are good things and those are good reasons to maybe attend those law schools. But if you want to know how serious a law school is about you working in public service. Another way to check it out is to see how well funded they're LRAP Program is. And how easy it is to qualified for it. If they make it readily available, and it looks like a generous program. And that's probably a good indication that that law school is taking public service seriously because they're trying to help you afford working in that way, as a lawyer. I'd definitely encourage you to take a look. If you're interested in public service, Take a look at this AVA list when you're building your list of schools. Alright. We kind of, we managed to get through those quickly. And I definitely want to answer any questions that anyone might have. And I know I was moving quickly and it was hard to interrupt me. So if you have questions, I'd be very happy to answer them now. And I'll just say that I hope with the takeaways from the program today are that know that these programs, these programs exist... and that they change. Sometimes politics have something to do with it. This was really just an introduction to the programs. You're going to want to do a deeper dive as you start really grappling with, with your own debt. If possible, borrow as little as you can. Because that really simplifies all of this. If you can get through law school with a with a smaller amount of debt, really makes a lot of different employment opportunities more, more readily available. And it helps simplify how you're going to pay off your debt. I'd also encourage you to check out the Pre-law Canvas module in our Career Development Toolkit. There's some more resources related to financing law school. And and you might benefit from taking a look at that. All right, I see we've got a we've got a question here in the chat, so I'll begin with that now. So the question is... Would you suggest against binding early decision, since it takes away the ability to negotiate? I love that question and the answer is nuanced. And really, this is one of those situations where it's a good idea to, to really consider your own personal situation. So I think the premise of that question is a good one. So if you're doing binding early decision, that means that if that law school says yes to you, you are bound to say yes to them. And that means that their financial aid offer is kind of take it or leave it. Because you can't, you can't use other financial aid offers. And the possibility that you will go to other law schools to leverage more merit aid from law, from, from that law school where you have applied early decision. So you really are kind of giving up some, some power to negotiate. Now, it depends on where you are. If you if if the law school that you're applying early decision to is absolutely the school you want to go to regardless of cost. Okay. If you're applying early decision to try to get sort of an advantage. Because you think, well, maybe I'm not as competitive as I could be at that law school. But if I apply early decision, that'll make me more competitive. I would caution you about that because early decision doesn't really make you a candidate that you are not. Meaning it doesn't.. if you're LSAT is is lower than where the law school typically selects a student or your GPA is. The fact that you've applied early decision, probably want influence them to select you. But if you're, if you're close and if you really do feel strongly about that law school and you really do want to give yourself the best shot at admission. That's when early decision works best. But it can compromise your financial aid situation. So I guess what I would say is think long and hard before finally... making a binding Early Decision application. Many times there are other ways to to strengthen your application. But still keep you able to renegotiate your your financial aid when the time comes? All right. Some more questions coming in... If we plan to apply to law school a few years after graduation, will we still have access to Cornell Career Services to discuss their applications and financial aid? So glad you asked that question. The answer is absolutely yes. We we work with alumni. And I'll just say that at least up until this year, this is going to be a weird year because of COVID. But up until this year, two-thirds and Cornell aliens who were applying to law school where at least a year out of Cornell. So any many, many of the people that I work with, our alumni. And I really appreciate you asking that. Alright, next question... I read that individuals are considered independence at the age of 24. Does that mean that there are no law schools that will look at your parents income after you pass the age of 24? That's a great question. I'm not sure I know that the age of 24 as being a particular cutoff, but I do think that the law schools are going to look at your parents income even around that age, maybe even older. Because really what they're doing at that point is they're trying to see, you know, what do you have available to you and how much of the need is it reasonable to ask the law school to make up? And so most applicants are just at the beginning of their career and they don't personally have any assets and probably can't really contribute meaningfully to the high cost of legal education. So law schools are still looking to parents as a potential source of funding. And so they still are going to ask to see at financial information from parents. All right, the next question.... How do Merit Scholarships compare across law schools? Do they tend to be more prevalent at better law schools or vice versa? That's a great question. There are a few law schools that say that they don't offer any meriting. Think Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Most law schools do offer merit aid. And so essentially the way merit aid, there's lot of ways to view merit aid. But one way to think about it in a pragmatic way is that merit aid is a law schools method for attracting students that it wants. So one thing that can happen is that let's say a law school says... Okay, for the incoming year, we have a particular mission or vision. For the next year we have a particular mission for our incoming class. We want to have a certain LSAT median, want to have a certain GPA median. Last year, we struggled in some diversity areas. Let's do better there. Let's improve the numbers there. And, and so they can use merit aid to try to attract those students that, that help them fill out the mission for their class. And so one classic example is the LSAT. So let's say at a law school, you apply to a law school and you have a very strong LSAT. And it's a school that would really like to have your LSAT score because it will help improve their rankings. That school is probably going to make a larger merit aid offered to you because they want it, want to attract that LSAT score. So sort of one way to think about this when you're building your list of law schools. Is it might be a good idea, let's say you're applying to like ten to 12 law schools. Maybe you'd pick three or four that are very selectively you absolutely love. And you apply to those. Maybe pick three or four that you absolute... You also love. Where you're still kinda looking up at the school in terms of LSAT and your GPA. But you're, you're in range. And then maybe you pick three or four schools. They are also very happy with that where you come in as a strong candidate in terms of LSAT and your, your GPA. Then hopefully what happens is maybe you get into one of those very, very selective schools. And they don't offer you any money. You get into one of the sort of middle schools, middle group schools, that we talked about and they offer you a percentage, maybe 30 or 40%, the cost of attendance. And I, maybe you get into a few of the schools in your final group. And they say, look, we're really happy to have you and we're going to cover your entire education. And then that allows you to kind of sit back and say, well, what appeals to me most? I have choices. It shifts the power dynamic away from the schools and in your direction. So that can be a nice way to think about how to manage merit aid. Alright, next question and again, I am giving very simplistic answers and I'm really happy to follow up with anybody who wants more detail or wants custom information for their own situation. And I really encourage you to set an appointment with me or with another Pre-law Advisor on campus. The next question is... if you have a spouse by the time you are applying to law school, will that end up affecting the financial aid offered? That's a really good question. And candidly, I'm not sure I know the answer. I think that may be down to how the individual law schools what information they decided they want to collect. And so I'm sorry, I'm being a little bit evasive about that, but I'm not sure. I know the answer. I would however be very happy to talk with you about that particular situation. If that's what you're facing. Alright. We're magically we're right at 545. And I want to honor everybody's time on this call. I don't see any other questions. I really appreciate you attending. And if you do have any follow up questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at Cornell Career Services and we'll we'll talk things through. Alright. Well, thank you very much. And I'm gonna go ahead and end the meeting is I'm not really seeing any other questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.