By: Steve Grumm

Bloomberg News

Happy Friday, folks.  If you were affected by the storm earlier this week, I hope you are safe and well.  Sandy delivered a painful reminder of our fragility.  One of the world’s most developed, sophisticated population centers found itself completely subject to nature’s whim.  Humbling.  And tragic for too many people.  On the legal front, the National Disaster Legal Aid website is serving as a resource both for those seeking help and those wishing to render it.  And while the news coverage has focused on the New York/Jersey region, it’s noteworthy that the storm’s impact has been felt far and wide.  I heard from a Cleveland-based legal aid lawyer who’s gone the week without electricity.     

For some post-Sandy escapism, here’s word that a new Star Wars movie is in the making (and that George Lucas is selling his empire to Disney).  Since I grew up loving the original trilogy and watching too many saccharine 80s sitcoms, I’m tempted to greet this development with unmitigated joy.  But I’ve got real questions about the franchise that inflicted Jar Jar Binks upon the world turning itself over to the company that gave us The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.  Be warned, Disney: take good care of this galaxy far, far away.  

This week in very, very short:

• Texas counties pooling resources to provide indigent defense in capital cases
• Mandatory pro bono, Singapore style
• Low-paid FL prosecutors and defenders
• Pushback on pushback on Income Based Repayment
• More on NY’s new 50-hour pro bono rule
• Missouri prosecutor minces no words in assigning fault for indigent defense system woes
• NOLA PD may see big cut in city funding
• We can hear you now.  Corporate lawyers should be freed up to do more pro bono, says Verizon general counsel.
• Even Harvard’s public interest minded law students face a difficult career path
• Great work from Iowa Legal Aid, but times are tough
• Low-paid Pittsburgh prosecutors and defenders
• New masters-in-law course in animal law
• Recent hiring by the Land of Enchantment’s (great state nickname!) public defense program
• Online ATJ in IL
• Super Music Bonus!

The summaries

• 11.1.12 – in Texas, counties banding together to provide capital defense counsel: “Parker County commissioners recently voted to join the Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases program, an action that could save the county thousands of dollars during the prosecution of expensive capital murder cases.  The program, funded through the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, represents defendants who are charged with the offense of capital murder and are eligible for the death penalty but cannot afford to hire their own attorneys.  The organization helps participating smaller counties meet the legal requirement to provide access to counsel for those defendants by providing a core team of four — two…attorneys, a mitigation specialist and a fact investigator — as well funds for an investigation…. Of the 240 counties eligible for the program … 193 have agreed to participate so far.”  (Story from the Weatherford Democrat.)

• 11.1.12 – I work hard to offer a global worldview, dear reader.  So here we have news about a potential move to mandatory pro bono in Singapore.  Only 16 hours, though, which is odd.  Here’s some detail from Today Online: “Lawyers could soon be required to contribute a minimum of 16 hours of free legal services, as part of a high powered committee’s proposal to make it mandatory for practitioners to provide legal aid to low-income and disadvantaged Singaporeans….  The scheme will cover legal assistance in four broad areas: Criminal legal aid, civil legal aid, community mediation including other voluntary services in the Subordinate Courts, and legal advisory work to institutions and charities.”

• 10.31.12 – “Florida prosecutors and public defenders can’t keep over-worked young lawyers very long without at least a break-even pay raise to offset the state’s 3 percent pension deduction, lawyers told state budget planners at a public hearing Wednesday….  ‘We have two kinds of assistant state attorneys today,’ said Buddy Jacobs, general counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association. ‘We have those that are leaving and those that are looking.’  Jacobs said 56 percent of assistant prosecutors are five years, or less, out of law school, and that the typical young prosecutor starts at $40,000 a year — with $80,000 to $100,000 in college debt…. The state attorney offices have had about 15 percent turnover in each of the past two years, he said.”  (Story from the Florida Current.)

• 10.31.12 – student debt expert Heather Jarvis pushes back on a report that was itself critical of the Income Based Repayment program: “The New America Foundation released ‘Safety Net or Windfall:  Examining Changes to Income-Based Repayment for Federal Student Loans’… arguing that changes to Income-Based Repayment (IBR) should be better targeted towards low-income borrowers rather than “high-income borrowers with graduate and professional degrees.”   The analysis in the report clearly demonstrates what advocates have long known is a weakness in the IBR program—the lowest-income student loan borrowers need more and different help.  But the wealthy certainly do not benefit the most from Income-Based Repayment.  Wealthy students and families have money to pay for education, do not need to rely on student loans, and neither need nor will receive many benefits from Income-Based Repayment.  We have a debt-based system of access to higher education.  Unless or until that changes, student loans enable middle- and lower-income students and families to pay for…advanced degrees.  Middle- and lower-income students…must borrow substantial amounts or decide not to pursue advanced graduate and professional degrees.”
  • Speaking of student debt, the federal “Pay As You Earn” regulations were finalized this week.  PAYE makes two significant changes to the Income Based Repayment program. It first lowers the debtor’s monthly contribution from roughly 15% of disposable income to 10%.  Second, it knocks down the 25-year forgiveness period to 20 years.  (Distinguish this, however, from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness provision, which forgives eligible loan balances after 10 years of payments into IBR.)  (Here’s some coverage from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.) 

• 10.31.12 – New York’s newly implemented 50-hour pro bono requirement for admission to the bar just will not leave the news.
  • New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman delivered remarks to a DC-based audience earlier this week.  The Blog of the Legal Times has coverage: “The pro bono requirement, which is the first of its kind for a state bar, is ‘conceptually unassailable,’ Lippman said, even as he acknowledged concerns raised by law schools and legal services providers about how it would work in practice. He also said that the requirement was not a precursor to a mandatory pro bono requirement for the bar, another concern within the legal community.  Lippman said he hoped other states would consider similar requirements
  • And from the New York Law Journal, we learn that the chief judge expects that few bar applicants will be exempted from the rule’s requirement.

• 10.30.12 – pulling no punches regarding Missouri’s troubled indigent defense system, the state prosecutor association’s president blames the indigent defense program’s leaders, not overwhelming caseloads, for the program’s woes: “Simply put, the current public defender system is broken beyond repair because its top brass has surrendered in the face of its challenges. The only suggestion the public defender leadership ever offers is that they need more money. When the state budget is already stretched too thin, Missourians deserve a better solution….  We need to consider a new model where we reserve state-paid public defenders for the most serious felonies, such as murders and sexual offenses, while contracting representation of misdemeanors and low-level felonies to private counsel who could do the work more efficiently.  (Op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)

• 10.30.12 – the city of New Orleans is funding the district attorney’s office at just slightly less than it did last year, but the public defender’s office will see funding slashed by 33% (from $1.2 million to $800,000.)  Here’s the story from the Times-Picayune. 

• 10.29.12 – loosen up state practice rules so that in-house counsel – who may not be licensed in the states in which they physically work – can do more pro bono.  This is the case made by Verizon general counsel Randal Milch in a Corporate Counsel op-ed.

• 10.29.12 – the Harvard Crimson looks at the difficulties confronted by public service minded law students when they choose between a relatively robust law-firm recruiting system and the more difficult path to public service, which involves a tight, low-paying job market.

• 10.29.12 – a piece on Iowa Legal Aid trumpets the organization’s work on behalf of thousands of vulnerable Hawkeye Staters, but closes on a somber note: “All of that work is being done with fewer people, though. Iowa Legal Aid served nearly 17 percent fewer people than in 2010 because of reduced revenue and reductions in staff. At the end of 2011, the organization had 12 fewer attorneys and 8 fewer support staff than it had at the beginning of 2010. Funding from the Supreme Court was reduced to $172,000 for 2012, which is down from the $828,572 grant received three years ago, and federal funding was cut by 15 percent.”  (Full piece in The Hawkeye.)

• 10/29/12 – citing NALP data, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looks at how low pay harries the Steel City’s junior prosecutors and defenders, forcing some to moonlight in order to make ends meet.

• 10/28.12 – the pet industry is booming – Big Pet? – and Lewis & Clark Law School has created a masters-in-law certificate program for tomorrow’s animal rights/law lawyers.  From the Columbia Tribune: “Enrollment in the yearlong program [which has an initial class of six students] is expected to grow to 15 or 20 students in three to five years, said attorney Pamela Frasch, assistant dean and executive director of the [school’s Center for Animal Law Studies].”

• 10/26/12 – New Mexico’s public defender program has done a fair amount of recent hiring.  That’s tapering off but they’re still looking for lawyers.  From the Las Cruces Sun-News: “Vacancies in the agency have declined from 20.8 percent in 2011 to 15 percent today.  Moreover…the chief public defender…said she expected vacancies to drop to 8 percent by January.  Her department is filling 70 jobs, she told the Legislative Finance Committee this week. In raw numbers, the public defender has 211 attorneys and 182 support employees. [The chief defender] said she had begun to reduce the vacancy rate because the Legislature increased her budget by $1.2 million last session. Overall, the [program’s] budget is $40.14 million. It stood at $42.6 million in 2010, then legislative cutbacks began because of the national fiscal crisis.”

• 10.26.12 – this Government Technology story is ostensibly about the launching of a successful online, self-help legal aid website in one county.  But it points to a larger trend in Illinois toward empowering low- and moderate-income residents with online legal resources.  

Music!  This week I’m having all kinds of trouble not listening to Centro-matic’s “Patience for the Ride.”  If I had to guess, I’d say the song has to do with the Enron fallout and similar instances of corporate malfeasance.  But as with all well-written songs, it draws upon more universal themes.  And I hear “Patience for the Ride” as an anthem for public interest lawyers who face long odds and powerful opponents.  The song also contains a somehow-unpretentious use of the word “eleemosynary”.  That’s straight badass, is what that is.

A recent report by the New America Foundation highlighted a perceived flaw in the Income Based Repayment program, namely that IBR will benefit not only low-income borrowers, but also high-debt, middle income borrowers, i.e. those who earn comfortable salaries but are also saddled by very high debt loads.  So there’s a question about whether a federal program can or should sustain itself when its benefit go to those who make a decent buck.

Heather Jarvis, student debt expert and friend of the PSJD Blog, pushes back on her blog:

The New America Foundation released “Safety Net or Windfall:  Examining Changes to Income-Based Repayment for Federal Student Loans” by Jason Delisle and Alex Holt, arguing that changes to Income-Based Repayment (IBR)should be better targeted towards low-income borrowers rather than “high-income borrowers with graduate and professional degrees.” 

The analysis in the report clearly demonstrates what advocates have long known is a weakness in the IBR program—the lowest-income student loan borrowers need more and different help.

But the wealthy certainly do not benefit the most from Income-Based Repayment.  Wealthy students and families have money to pay for education, do not need to rely on student loans, and neither need nor will receive many benefits from Income-Based Repayment. 

…

We have a debt-based system of access to higher education.  Unless or until that changes, student loans enable middle- and lower-income students and families to pay for the advanced degrees required to work in many higher-income professions.  Middle- and lower-income students and families must borrow substantial amounts or decide not to pursue advanced graduate and professional degrees.

Income-Based Repayment enables lower- and middle- income students to borrow and successfully repay high student loan balances, and borrowing and repaying a high student loan balance is the path from a lower- or middle-income family to high-income employment.  The person who benefits the most from IBR comes from a family of modest means, borrows a lot to earn advanced degrees, and makes payments based on income every month for many years.  The more that student loan borrower earns, the more he or she will pay. 

Last Friday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor participated at the Equal Justice Works Conference and Career Fair.  The good folks at the Blog of the Legal Times have coverage of a Q&A session wiht the justice, who herself was a prosecutor in NYC:

In a speech late last week to law students, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor encouraged them to serve their communities, both as attorneys and as citizens.

It was that notion of service that led Sotomayor to consider a career in the law, she said during her October 26 presentation to the Equal Justice Works annual conference and career fair in Arlington, Va., which drew more than 1,000 law students from about 200 law schools.

“The law, regardless of how you practice it, if you practice honorably, you are doing service, and it was a service that appealed to me because it was a service I felt like I could contribute something to.” said Sotomayor. Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asked her questions onstage before members of the audience got a chance during a question and answer period.

Sotomayor conceded that she did not have lofty intentions when she made early career choices, but that she based her decisions on what she needed at each stage to develop skills to do meaningful work. She added that if the students in the audience think their job is the only form of public service available to them, they are narrowing themselves.

“Being an involved citizen requires not just doing a job, it requires being more involved in the broader issues of your community, of insuring you’re a good citizen in multiple different ways.”

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Our neighbors at public interest law firm Mehri & Skalet are seeking their 2013 Find Justice Fellow.  Interested in civil rights, employment, housing and/or consumer law?  Give this this a peep.

Mehri & Skalet, PLLC is a law firm that litigates class actions to protect individuals from unfair or discriminatory practices. Our areas of practice include civil rights and anti-discrimination law, consumer protection, fair housing and lending, antitrust, wage and hour, and the False Claims Act. We focus on developing systemic reforms to improve the workplace and the marketplace. The Mehri & Skalet Find Justice Fellowship provides a promising new attorney with an introduction to our practice.

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To further our mission of public justice, we created the Mehri & Skalet Find Justice Fellowship in 2009, which offers a new attorney the opportunity to join the firm and gain experience on the wide range of cases that we pursue. The Find Justice Fellow works on all aspects of our practice, including the investigation of new cases, client relations, research, discovery, motions, negotiations, litigation strategy and court hearings.

The Fellowship duration is for two years, beginning in the Fall of 2013. Compensation will be $50,000 per year with full health benefits.

Not too shabby.  Check out the full job posting (PSJD login required).

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center is seeking a pro bono director…

APALC seeks a pro bono director to oversee volunteer involvement projects and partnerships, with the goals of cultivating volunteer resources (legal and non-legal) to further APALC’s work and reinforce APALC’s support base by providing opportunities to be involved in APALC’s mission. Under the supervision of the Vice-President of Programs & Communications, the director will work with APALC’s program, development and communications teams to provide strategic vision for the organization’s pro bono work and to strengthen APALC’s volunteer capacity.   The director is responsible for the cultivation of relationships with key pro bono stakeholders (e.g., law firms, law schools, bar associations, etc.) and the day-to-day management of APALC’s volunteer program. This position is full-time and exempt.

Read the full job listing on PSJD (login required).

It’s crunch time! Over 600 public interest law students from all over the country are preparing to attend the 2012 Equal Justice Works Conference & Career Fair this weekend in Washington, D.C.

If you’re headed to the conference this weekend, take a look at these tips from Equal Justice Works to help you prepare and make the most out of your career fair experience:

• EJW Resume Do’s and Dont’s
• Tips for a Successful Table Talk
• How to Get the Most Out of the Conference & Career Fair
• Preparing for the Interview: Dressing for Success

Also, be sure to check out PSJD’s Resource Center for other helpful guides on professional career development. Specifically, Interviewing Tips for Postgraduate Public Interest Jobs may be especially helpful for 3Ls and recent graduates.

Don’t forget to stop by our table during Table Talk for career development resources and more information on PSJD.org. The full Equal Justice Works Conference & Career Fair schedule can be found here. Happy job hunting!

The Center is a multi-racial organization dedicated to building the power and participation of poor people in order to expand democracy and transform the economy. We organize directly affected people, and couple their courage with strategic legal, policy, and communications work to build campaigns that advance racial justice, immigrant rights, and a fair economy. The Center anchors three grassroots membership organizations: the Congress of Day Laborers, Stand With Dignity, and the National Guestworker Alliance, as well as a strategic legal department that innovates law and policy strategies that build grassroots power. Our members are African American and immigrant workers and families in the South, as well as guestworkers across the country.

The Center is seeking 1L and 2L law students for its summer 2013 law clerk program.

Law clerks should have an interest in the Center’s practice areas and in using legal tools in the context of community-led justice campaigns. Applicants with language skills in Spanish, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, or Telugu are especially encouraged.

View the job listing on PSJD (login required).

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.  Well, not too happy.  Yesterday, we at NALP released the 2012 Public Sector & Public Interest Attorney Salary Report.  These already-low salaries, when taking inflation into account, have remained close to stagnant in the recent past. (Civil legal aid lawyers start at about $43,000 annually while assistant prosecutors’ and defenders’ starting salaries hover around $50,000)  But of course the amount of debt that today’s junior attorneys carry has swollen.  Thus, a public interest attorney’s income pie has stayed the same size, but a much larger piece of it now goes to debt service.

Loan repayment (and in some cases, forgiveness) programs can mitigate this circumstance.  Those grads positioned to maximize repayment/forgiveness options may not experience financial discomfort.  But not all types of loans qualify for inclusion in repayment programs.  And there is uncertainty about the viability of today’s loan repayment regime – a constellation of government-, school-, and employer-run repayment plans.  Finally there is the law graduate’s frustration of having to take on a massive amount of debt, only then to have it reduced.  Here’s the important question: with low, stagnant salaries, with the rising cost of legal education, and with a terribly tight job market, how difficult is it becoming for tomorrow’s lawyers to pursue public service career paths?

This question will not yield a simple, yes-or-no, across-the-board answer.  Circumstances are different for every law student.  But we can identify the key variables involved in the analysis. I’m going to focus on this as I do some writing in the next few weeks.  I am so far from having the market on wisdom cornered that I sometimes can’t find the market.  So please be in touch with your thoughts, insights, questions, etc.  I’m at sgrumm@nalp.org or 202.296.0057.     

Some interesting miscellany before the week’s public interest and access-to-justice news:

• in the nonprofit world, the Chronicle of Philanthropy released its list of the 400 largest nonprofits, accompanied by several analysis pieces.  Much of the content is password-protected.  But there is valuable data/insight in the accessible areas too, and one can get a sense of how the recession did, and continues to, impact the nonprofit world.
• on the job-market front, resume advice is ubiquitous, and some of it is so bland – “make it look clean” – as to be useless.  However, this blog post – 10 Reasons Your Resume Isn’t Getting You Interviews – on the U.S. News website is better than most of the content I come across because it compels job-seekers look critically at how their resumes are constructed.

Okay, on to the public interest and access-to-justice news.  In very, very short:

• coverage of NALP’s public interest salary report;
• IL attorney general directs more funding to legal aid for housing work;
• pro se resources in the Aloha State;
• the ABA’s weeklong celebration of pro bono takes place next week;
• OK legal aid providers also getting funds to do housing work;
• A look at law student pro bono in Minnesota (and New York);
• A Wall Street legal clinic?  Seton Hall’s Investor Advocacy Project;
• ~$7 million contract to provide legal aid to disabled New Yorkers up for grabs;
• An Innocence Project clinic launches at West Virginia Law;
• An Oklahoma nonprofit law office serving “modest means” clients expands;
• super music bonus

The summaries:

• 10.18.12 – here’s some coverage of the above-noted NALP public interest salary report:
  • From the ABA Journal
  • And from the National Law Journal

• 10.18.12 – “Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) announced Oct. 18 that $620,000 in funding from the national foreclosure settlement has been awarded to Illinois Legal Aid Online. The attorney general’s grant will be used to develop web-based resources to assist Illinois homeowners and legal professionals dealing with foreclosure, including online training programs for legal staff and attorneys working with Illinois residents facing foreclosure. The grant also will be used to develop and enhance educational websites intended for homeowners and renters affected by foreclosure.”  (Story from the Rock River Times.)

• 10.17.12 – Aloha.  This article covers the opening of one Hawaiian courthouse self-help center for pro se litigants, but more importantly highlights a statewide trend toward bolstering pro se resources. (Here’s the article in the Maui News.)

• 10.16.12 – the ABA’s “Pro Bono Celebration” week is next week.  There’s much happening on local, state, and nationwide levels to promote pro bono’s importance.  Here’s an ABA overview, and here’s the official Celebrate Pro Bono website, which serves as a central repository for event listings and resources.

• 10.16.12 – “Oklahoma’s $18.6 million mortgage settlement with five big lenders will pay for legal services for people trying to manage a mortgage, avoid foreclosure and keep their homes — no matter the lender — in a new partnership between the state attorney general’s office and Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.  Attorney General Scott Pruitt said Monday that Legal Aid received $1.27 million from the settlement to hire, train and reassign 15 attorneys and seven paralegals to help homeowners with mortgage modifications, refinancing, short sales, housing counseling and navigating the foreclosure process in a program called Resolution Oklahoma.”  (Story from the Oklahoman.)
  • and here comes a terrible segue into an unrelated topic. While we’re on Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie was born there. And here’s a Chronicle of Higher Education article looking at Guthrie’s legacy 100 years after his birth.  He was Bob Dylan long before Bob Dylan was Bob Dylan.  (I think of Guthrie as the first punk-rocker.)  And he exerted enormous, reaching-beyond-the-grave influence on the evolution of American music.  Good read.

• 10.16.12 – in light of the just-implemented New York State rule requiring 50 hours of pro bono service to get a law license, the Minnesota Daily looks at law student pro bono in the Gopher State. “All four Minnesota law schools — the University of Minnesota, Hamline University, University of St. Thomas and William Mitchell College of Law — provide legal volunteering opportunities through a partnership with the Minnesota Justice Foundation.  MJF is a nonprofit organization founded in 1982 by law students in Minnesota. It provides students with a database of volunteer opportunities as well as advising from a staff attorney at each school…. The only Minnesota school to require legal volunteer work is Hamline University School of Law — a rule that was put in place last year.”
  • speaking of the New York rule, here’s a Reuters piece noting that the rules broad definition of “pro bono” means that there might not be much “new” pro bono generated because many externship, clinical, and volunteer projects already performed by law students will satisfy the rule.

• 10.15.12 – a look at the work of Seton Hall Law’s Investor Advocacy Project, a clinic that helps low- and moderate-income investors who’ve been wronged. “”We provide advocacy for those investors who would otherwise be unable to secure adequate representation,” says David M. White, a law school faculty member and director of the…Project. The contingency fees charged by lawyers would alone eat up most of any possible recovery.  The clients are not big-time investors. They bought annuities, instruments like insurance policies. Or invested settlements from injury claims. Or the proceeds from the sale of their homes. White says the investments involved in these cases do not exceed $100,000.”  (Article from the Star-Ledger.)

• 10.15.12 – “Three groups have proposed taking over federally funded advocacy and legal protection of disabled New York residents who are in the care of the state and its nonprofit contractors.  Syracuse University, Disability Advocates Inc. and a coalition of six legal aid groups that now provide many of the services statewide under individual contracts have filed proposals. The six are the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York, Legal Services of Central New York, Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, Nassau Suffolk Law Services, Neighborhood Legal Services and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.  The selection is expected following public hearings, which have not been set yet.”  The funding amounts for about $7 million annually.  (Story from WNCT.)

• 10.12.12 – the West Virginia University Innocence Project has opened its doors as a law-school clinic in the Mountain State.  (Story from the Gazette-Mail.)

• 10.11.12- a nonprofit law office serving clients who have too much income to qualify for legal aid – which is not saying much because the income limit is typically 125% of federal poverty guidelines – but too little to afford full-scope representation is expanding in the Sooner State. (Story from KOAM.) 

• Music!  It’s a gray day here in D.C.  So how about something mellow?  Here’s Ryan Adams (not to be confused with Bryan Adams) performing “Desire”.

Let’s go prosecute some health care fraud in sunny Miami. 

The United States Attorney’s Office (USAO), Southern District of Florida (SDFL), is seeking experienced attorneys to serve as Assistant United States Attorney in the Criminal Division of one of the largest USAOs in the nation. USAO/SDFL is a leader in the prosecution of health care fraud, bank and other white collar frauds, narcotics offenses, human trafficking cases, public corruption, and national security matters. Divisions include: Appellate, Asset Forfeiture, Civil and Criminal. The Criminal Division is further divided into Sections: Major Crimes, Economic and Environmental Crimes, Public Integrity and National Security, Narcotics and Special Prosecutions. There are also three branch offices located in Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Ft. Pierce.

The applicant selected will represent the U.S. Government as an Assistant United States Attorney in a wide range of unique and complex criminal health care fraud cases, in a District that extends over 300 miles from Key West to Vero Beach…

Here’s the job listing on PSJD. (Login required.)

A Department of Education blog post offers a basic “get acquainted with your loans” review:

Here are five things you should know about your student loans:

1.     Federal vs. Private Loans

Federal loans are managed and backed by the U.S. government.  These loans are designed to provide students with fair treatment.  Because they offer the best terms for borrowers, federal loans are the best option for students.

Private loans are managed and backed by private banks.  These banks are not subject to the same rules and regulations of federal loans, and may feature higher (or variable) interest rates, stricter repayment plans and penalties, or other terms that may make them more expensive.

You also may encounter other, less common types of loans, such as state loans (managed by your state) or institutional loans (managed by your college or university).  In all cases, carefully read and understand the loan terms before deciding to accept.

2.     Unsubsidized vs. Subsidized Loans

Federal loans can be either subsidized or unsubsidized.  A subsidized student loan means that the government pays the interest for you while you’re in school, as long as you’re enrolled at least half time.  That means that if you take out a $5,000 subsidized student loan to pay for your freshman year, and graduate in four years of full-time classes, you’ll still owe $5,000 when you graduate.  Interest will only “accrue,” or be added to the repayment amount, after you stop being a student.

An unsubsidized student loan means that interest “accrues” even while you’re in school.  Some federal loans and nearly all private loans are unsubsidized.  You don’t always have to pay the interest while you’re a student, but the total amount you’ll need to repay is still growing.  If you have an unsubsidized student loan, it’s a good idea to pay the monthly interest while in school, even if you don’t need to.

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Read the full list, and dont’ forget PSJD’s more advanced education debt resources.