Becoming an attorney without student loans

The conversation about law school cost is usually about the number. It should be about what the number does to you afterwards.

Debt picks your first job

A graduate with six figures of student debt cannot take a public defender role, a small-firm associate seat, or two lean years building their own practice. The payment schedule makes the decision before they do.

This is why so many people who went to law school to do one kind of work end up doing another. Not a change of heart. A change of arithmetic.

Paying monthly instead of borrowing

CDTA is built to be paid for out of income rather than out of a loan. Tuition is structured as monthly payments over the course of study, and because classes meet on evenings and Saturdays, most students keep working while they study.

That is the mechanism. No loan origination, no capitalized interest, no repayment plan that outlives the degree.

What is inside the tuition figure

The other half of the cost question is what gets billed separately. At CDTA these are included rather than added: every textbook for the full course of study, a LexisNexis license, ExamSoft, AdaptiBar in the first year, internal First-Year Law Students’ Examination reviews, the Saturday Enrichment Program, and the weekly Barrister luncheons.

Bar preparation in particular is usually a separate four-figure purchase after graduation, at exactly the moment a new graduate has the least money.

What it buys you

Graduating without debt is not really a financial outcome. It is a freedom outcome. You get to take the job you wanted, in the community you came from, at the salary that work actually pays.

Current tuition figures and the payment schedule are on the tuition page, and the Registrar will confirm the current terms before you commit to anything.