<p>“Btw, aries, I haven’t really traced it all through, but I think the social responsibility question gets mooted by the fact that the law schools will give those scholarships out to somebody else.”</p>
<p>I think I was not clear, or you missed my big problem. The OP’s son wants to do public interest law, which will not enable him to repay his loans at the rate of more than a few thousand dollars a year. His options for reducing his debt load are, inter alia:
*Taking the $120,000 scholarship at a top 20 law school (e.g. USC);
*Studying for and retaking the LSAT to try for merit aid at T30s;
*Deferring a year to try for more merit money; or
*Figuring out where the heck he wants to live so that he won’t have to take on an extra hundred thousand dollars in debt to pay for portability.</p>
<p>Yet his mother thinks that it’s okay for him to do NONE of those things, presumably because her son will pay the exact same amount of money whatever he goes. That the taxpayers could pick up thirty grand or so for USC, or a quarter-million for Berkeley, is not something that she seems to care about. It’s legal! she trumpets triumphantly. </p>
<p>If it were the son’s money on the line, the OP would be having an entirely different discussion here. If she were having this chat with members of the general public - perhaps a trucker married to a waitress, both of whom work overtime to pull down $60k a year between the two of them, and are trying to help their kids through community college or beautician school - the earful she would get would have her on her knees, thanking me for my civility.</p>