New Legal Aid Attorneys Benefit from Loan Assistance Repayment Bills

    Today most recent law school graduates who wish to pursue public service careers, such as defender and civil legal aid attorneys, face a tough decision when it comes to working their way out of debt. New federal legislation now offers a way to relieve that pressure and make public service more accessible to recent graduates.

    The College Cost Reduction Act (H.R. 2669), enacted last month, provides public interest lawyers (and other public interest professionals) with income-based repayment for federal education debt. According to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the income-based repayment plan “caps a borrower’s payments at roughly 15 percent of her adjusted gross income minus 15 percent of his/her 150 percent of the poverty level.” After 25 years, all loans will be forgiven. An additional section of the bill (Section 401) encourages new lawyers to pursue a career in indigent defense or civil legal aid by forgiving debt after ten years of full-time work if the borrower has a federal direct loan or consolidates the debt into a federal direct consolidation loan before beginning to repay the debt.

    Another current bill, the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2007, aims to forgive the debt of law students who become prosecutors and public defenders. The program, administered by the U.S. Department of Justice, would forgive up to a $60,000 per attorney. The Harkin Civil Legal Assistance Loan Repayment Act, part of the John R. Justice Act, “allows participants to receive up to $40,000 each” from the U.S. Department of Education, according to the NLADA. This John R. Justice Act passed in the Senate as part of the Higher Education Amendments Act (S. 1642) on July 24.

For more information visit the National Legal Aid and Defender Association website: http://www.nlada.org/.