Is Law School Worth the Private Student Loans? Here’s What the Math Says

Should you take out private student loans for law school? What’s the return on investment (ROI) of the degree, and can you trust the numbers your prospective program is sharing with you?

After consulting for hundreds of lawyers on six-figure law school loans over the past 10 years, we have data to help inform your decision about how and whether to borrow for law school.

We will look at income ranges, talk about the debt load, and explore options to consider for private borrowing.

Income as a lawyer: Does it justify the student loans?

Before you borrow six figures of law school debt, you need to understand what lawyers actually earn. Here’s the income stats from the 392 lawyers in our 2025 survey of Student Loan Planner readers:

Percentile	Lawyer income
10th	$85,000
25th	$104,500
Average	$160,358
75th	$197,500
90th	$262,000

Average law school debt

The average law school student debt reported in our survey was $200,353, and lawyers have some of the highest student loan payments.

The best way to compare ROI in this case is to look at what you would have earned with only a bachelor’s degree.

Analyzing the ROI of law school borrowing

The cost of law school depends on where you go. Take a look at the YouTube video below showing a detailed analysis of borrowing for NYU’s law school program (which represents any high-cost private school) vs. the University of Florida (representing a low-cost public program).

As the video explains, you're on the hook for significant private debt on top of your federal loans at NYU. At UF, you can stay entirely within the federal borrowing limits and avoid private loans altogether.

So does the degree still pay off? If you're earning around $200,000 as a lawyer (roughly the 75th percentile in our survey), the answer is yes. After taxes and student loan payments, you'd come out about $30,000 ahead annually compared to someone who stopped at a bachelor's degree earning $70,000.

Eventually, you pay off both your federal and private loans, and that income gap widens significantly.

But here's the part most people skip over: even at the 25th percentile of lawyer income, attending a low-cost public school like UF still makes financial sense. You'd earn roughly 20% more in take-home pay after taxes and loan payments than you would with just a bachelor's degree — that's about $10,000 to $13,000 more per year. Not life-changing money, but a solid positive return with a clear path to paying off your loans entirely.

When to borrow private student loans for law school

If you think it’s credible that you’d get a Big Law job after graduating, then borrowing private student loans for a JD is a reasonable choice mathematically.

However, if you want to do public interest law, the math of private student loans does not make sense. You’d need to either attend a public, lower-cost institution, or you’d need to find a law school that would support your public interest goals with lawyer loan forgiveness programs possibly offered through the university.

The good news is that many public university law schools would not require students to take on much private debt, given borrowing limits of $50,000 per year.

In contrast, private university law schools will likely be mostly private student loan funded unless tuition levels take a sharp drop.

That said, Big Law comes with real trade-offs beyond the numbers. The hours are intense, the burnout rate is high, and the career path demands a level of sustained commitment that isn't for everyone. If your plan is to ride out Big Law for a few years, pay down six figures in private loans, and then transition — that's a plan with a shelf life. Make sure you've thought it through.

There's also a middle ground that a lot of prospective law students overlook: corporate counsel roles. These positions typically fall in the 75th to 90th percentile income range for lawyers, and the math still works even with private borrowing from a higher-cost school. You don't have to stay in Big Law forever for the degree to pay off, but you do need to land somewhere in that upper-income tier if you're carrying substantial private debt.

How law school borrowing used to work

It used to be that you could take out federal student loans up to the full cost of attendance and repay just 10% of your income through income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, no matter how much debt you accrued.

With that math, if you subtract 10% of your income as a lawyer and it is more than what you would have made with a bachelor’s degree, then going to law school made sense.

Pretend you make $100,000 and lose $10,000 to IDR payments each year. That net income of $90,000 is more than most folks would make with a bachelor’s degree. So the $250,000 JD degree from a private university made economic sense under this old model.

The new model means most JDs need to pay back loans

With new, lower borrowing limits, most lawyers will need to plan to repay their loans in full.

With private sector income-driven repayment (IDR) now lasting for 30 years, forgiveness becomes mathematically irrelevant for most lawyers under these new borrowing rules. 

Paying 10% of income for 30 years simply wipes out most of someone’s student loan balance, leaving little left to forgive.

When looking at the math, low-cost law school programs still make financial sense. Many law students could borrow modest amounts of private law school loans from a place like Student Loan Planner, which shows you rates from multiple lenders.

Additionally, high-cost law schools that give you a high chance of a coveted Big Law job also make financial sense. That said, taking that path is a real gamble. You’d have no choice but to work for several years while paying down your large private student loans, and your career choices would be limited as you paid down this debt. 

If law school is not what you’ve wanted to do your whole life, going under this new loan regime is a very risky proposition. It will still result in good jobs for most students who choose to attend (and can secure financing).

But the days of “just go to law school if you don’t know what you want to do with your life” are clearly no longer true, considering the lawyer job outlook and especially in light of these new borrowing limits.

Prospective law students can and should attend and should feel comfortable borrowing private student loans, so long as it’s to attend a low-cost public school or a high-cost private school with the goal of a high-paying Big Law or corporate job.

Getting help with how to borrow for law school

If you need help figuring out how to best borrow for law school, you can book a consultation with our team of experts at Student Loan Planner.

We’d love to help you weigh the pros and cons of various options, discuss different borrowing strategies, and look at your long-term goals in helping you make the best decision for your potential career path as a lawyer.