So, I'm sure you've all seen this story. Robert Bowman, who reminds me of the joke "Someone gets mugged every 3 minutes in this country, and boy, is he mad," has weathered a lot of obstacles and bad luck in his Odyssey to complete college, law school, and an LL.M. Now, at 47, after passing the New York bar on his third time, an appellate court has held that he cannot receive a license because he has amassed student loan debt of over $400,000 over the past 26 years without any serious effort to pay down that amount.
I guess my first reaction is sympathetic. So what? The State of California is paying its bills in I.O.U.s this month, and there are thousands of Americans who owe $400,000 on houses with the fair market value lower than Barbie's dream house. It doesn't appear that Bowman is in default on his loans -- he has taken valid deferrals. It does appear that he is disputing some of the amounts (interest and fees on various loans over 26 years probably does get complicated), but he's not a shirker. Just a deferrer. If the court is worried about the lenders, then denying Bowman a license to charge clients for legal services seems a little backwards to me.
If the NY state judges are uncomfortable with someone legally amassing this much federally-guaranteed debt, then they should alert their federal legislators about the possibility that the student loan program spawns "lifetime students" who make deferring a way of life. But don't take your annoyance out on Mr. Bowman. Just because he has a large loan balance doesn't necessarily mean he'll steal clients' money or abscond with retainers.
Has the financial crisis created some anti-debt backlash? My retirement account is barely there now, and it's all the fault of people like you, Mr. Bowman, who borrow with no thought for the future? We need to show this promiscuous borrowers that good people won't stand for it!
I saw a quip the other day that now there are 3 kinds of people: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-Not-Paid-For-What-They-Haves. This may be a (sort of) funny Twitter, but it's not good state bar policy.
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1. Posted by Jake on July 2, 2009 @ 18:46 | Permalink
As a general principle, the idea that unpaid debts should not prevent someone from becoming a member of the bar seems unoffensive.
But, far and away, the most common ground for disciplinary sanctions against attorneys is mishandling money kept in client trust accounts.
Should a person who has run up more than $400,000 of debt over a period exceeding 20 years, while never repaying a penny in all that time, be entrusted with client funds?
Probably not.
And it is no answer to say that Bowman is "not a shirker. Just a deferrer."
The deferral of debt repayment for over 20 years is economically, logically, and lawfully indistinguishable from cheating one's creditors.
2. Posted by Mark S. Devenow on July 3, 2009 @ 14:49 | Permalink
Jake - There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between amassing/contracting debt (even in instances where the borrower gets in way over his/her head) and embezzling/misappropriating/intermingling money from client trust accounts. Christine Hurt has it right. Were it not for a generalized economic climate in which the urge to hunt for scapegoats the fact that someone has accumulated a large debt, in the course of being a "professional student", vel non, the entire issue would not exist.
In fact, the greater public protection issue arises from the fact that the particular individual denied admission to practice law on such spurious grounds failed the bar examination several times before finally passing. Specifically, it would make more sense to deny a license to practice law to persons who have failed bar examinations on numerous occasions. Now, that is a regulation which might be supportable and one which would make for some sense. A pity that there is no commentary to THAT effect.
3. Posted by Jake on July 3, 2009 @ 22:00 | Permalink
Mark --
There is no "HUGE DIFFERENCE" of the sort you allude to.
Certain people in this world find it easier to spend money that belongs to other people, rather than their own.
Such persons commonly are known as "deadbeats."
To deny this plain fact is naive.
Should you have a lawyer, I honestly hope he or she is not a deadbeat.
4. Posted by MDF on July 5, 2009 @ 21:16 | Permalink
Jake, there's a big difference between deferring a debt and defaulting. For one thing, deferring is contractually allowed. If the lender has a problem with that, they shouldn't have written it into the loan contract. (Of course, odds are this is a government-subsidized loan and the gov't requires the deferral clause -- in which case the lender shouldn't have signed on to make risk-free high origination fee loans with government money...)
Mark, if New York didn't let people who failed the bar exam twice take it again, they wouldn't have been able to let John F. Kennedy, Jr. pass. And that would have been embarrassing!
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