Debt-to-Income by Law School for Recent Graduates

A few important notes for the following table:

• The data on this page come from the U.S. Department of Education. The Education Department obtained the earnings data from the Department of Treasury and released the dataset in December 2020.
• The borrowing data reflect 2016 and 2017 graduates; it does not include any prior borrowing from undergraduate or other completed studies.
• The earnings data reflect only earnings by those who borrowed at least $1 of federal student loans to attend law school. In 2016 and 2017, roughly three-quarters of graduates borrowed for law school.
• The earnings data measure actual earnings in the first full calendar year after graduation, e.g. the earnings were from 2017 for 2016 graduates. The Education Department earnings statistic includes any graduate who paid taxes during the measurement year, regardless of how many jobs they had or what type(s) of the job(s).
  • This measures something different than NALP, which measures the annual salary of a graduate 10 months after graduation (on March 15) and reports only on long-term, full-time jobs. A graduate who started their job on March 1, 2017 would report their starting salary (for example, $60,000) to NALP. If they held the job for the remainder of the calendar year, they would have earned $50,000 from that job in 2017. But if they made $4,000 from part-time work in January and February, they would report $54,000 of income to the IRS.
• The "amount borrowed" does not include interest that accumulates during law school, thus is different than the "amount owed" or "debt." The payment column assumes a weighted interest rate of 6.3%. Federal graduate student loans have two different interest rates. The first $20,500 each year would be one point lower than the rate for each additional dollar in that year. The actual weighted interest rate will vary depending on when and how much a student borrowed. We calculated a universal weighted average interest rate based on historical interst rates based on when 2016 and 2017 graduates borrowed. Nonetheless, the monthly payment is underestimated because the Education Department student debt data reflect the amount borrowed instead of the amount owed when the first payment was due six months after graduation. In other words, the monthly payment ignores the $1000's of interest that accumulated during law school and after graduation. This increases both the principal and interest portion of the monthly payment.
• The debt-to-income ratio on this page divides the median earnings into the median amount borrowed. This provides an imperfect benchmark for excessive borrowing. For incomes on the lower end (factoring in cost of living), a 1.00 ratio may provide a reasonable balance—at 1.00, debt matches earnings. But on the very high end of incomes, a higher ratio may feel manageable. While a little more challenging to calculate, a debt-to-income ratio using monthly payments provides a more relatable guide. Read more on this method here.