How much will your law degree cost?

Education comes with a price tag but students with HECS-HELP often postpone worrying about their mounting debt until tax sneaks up and smacks them in the face in their first year out of uni.

Felicity Nelson • 03 March 2015 • Corporate Counsel

purple sky line of graduates law degree cost of education larger debt

Courtesy of Luftphilia/Flickr

For all those starry-eyed law students starting this week, Folklaw is here to give you the heads up on how much you will be out of pocket by the end of your degree.

You’re out of free articles for this month

Username or Email

Password Forgot password?

Keep me signed in on this device.

First Name

Last Name

Mobile

Organisation Type

By becoming a member, I agree to receive information and promotional messages from Lawyers Weekly. I can opt out of these communications at any time. For more information, please visit our Privacy Statement.

Need help signing up? Visit the Help Centre.

A Bachelor of Laws costs around $34,827. This is based on the University of Sydney’s tuition fee estimate for Commonwealth-supported students, textbook cost estimates provided by the Sydney University Law Society, and the student services and amenities fee. Admission to this course is only available through a combined degree, which bumps the price up considerably.

Law students who wish to practise law must undergo further professional training, which can also be quite pricey. The College of Law’s practical legal training program, for instance, costs about $8,560.

That might sound like a lot of money, but don’t fret – studying for a Bachelor of Laws isn’t as expensive as medicine.

A four-year Doctor of Medicine at the University of Sydney costs around $42,064 in tuition fees alone. This is a postgraduate-only course, which means students need to have covered the costs of a bachelor's degree already, which can add up to anything between $18,456 and $35,072, according to the University of Sydney's website.

VIEW ALL

So, is a university degree worth the financial investment? Absolutely – having a degree sets you up for a much higher income over your lifetime. In the first year out of uni alone, law graduates in full-time employment earn $53,000 on average.

Unfortunately, law graduate employment is at a record low and one quarter of law grads who wanted a full-time job in 2014 could not find one within four months of finishing their degree.

However, the long-term employment prospects are good for university graduates in general: only 3.2 per cent are unemployed compared with 8.2 per cent for those with no post-secondary qualifications, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Folklaw fears that the federal government’s move towards deregulating university fees and introducing real interest rates of up to 6 per cent on student loans in 2016 will significantly increase student debt.

While the impact of such policies is largely unknown, economists and the Labor Party have predicted that it will push law and medical degrees over the $100,000 mark.

Figure 1: The cost of a university degree compared with the average annual salary of a graduate under the age of 25 in full-time employment. (Source: The University of Sydney and Graduate Careers Australia's GradStats report 2014)

wsde Friday, 03 April 2015

"So, is a university degree worth the financial investment? Absolutely..." Are you for real? Law degrees now (particularly full fee ones) are toxic overpriced sludge. You will be stuck in debt for life and they will stigmatize you for all other jobs. Dont go.

0
Dave Thursday, 12 March 2015

Having swiched to law from medicine after my first year, and subsequently keeping an eye on comparative levels of affluence for each of the social groups that resulted, my anecdotal experience is that the "average" lawyer is going to earn a lot less than your "average" doctor. Entrepeneurial types who get lucky with the right boutique practice at the right time or who win the Biglaw equity partner raffle are obviously going to be in another category to either of course. Incidentally, and appropos only of people pulling in scratch I can not even dream of, we encountered a Sydney Silk charging $200K for four days work recently.

0
Jenny Thursday, 05 March 2015

I guess it depends on the university as well. I just started at Uni Melb with their JD program and we have four contact hours per subject. Our class sizes aren't too bad either, I think seminars are capped at 50 but they are often often a lot smaller. My obligations class has only about 30 students.

0
Lawyers Weekly Wednesday, 04 March 2015

We take your point about combined law degrees and have added this information to the article.A postgraduate medical degree is called a Doctor of Medicine. <a href="sydney.edu.au/courses/Doctor-of-Medicine" rel="nofollow">sydney.edu.au/courses/D...</a>

0
Joe Wednesday, 04 March 2015

The Federal Government is permitting the establishment of a new Law School every year (eg Sunshine Coast University Law School 2012, Austrralian Catholic University 2013, Swinburne University 2014) meaning that there must be student demand to justify the Commonwealth supported places.The real issue is the variablity of the standard of teacher and student across the now 37 law schools in Australia.As the number of Law schools grow ,the nature of LLB's and now JD's is changing.Both are far more generalist in content than the traditional LLB used to be and this will become more so as Law Schools fall into line to meet the 2016 startup of the Australian Quality Framework (AQF) based upon a unified international standard of graduate in all disciplines. As the legal profession exercises far less influence over LLB/JD content (the Priestley 11 content areas are being reviewed),a greater onus will fall upon the legal profession to educate graduates who chose to practice. PLT Courses nationally are lowest common denominator offerings (now mainly on line).Might I venture a few predictions? Firstly,the time must be fast approaching when the Federal Government will not be prepared to fund places in a 4 years LLB in favour of 3 years when a growing proportion of law students are effectively already graduates or undertaking combined/ jpoint degrees which reduce their necessity to study about a year of law electives.(this is in line with movements in the US and UK which have only 3 years LLB's /JD's for all entry level students.In the US ,the 2 year JD proposal is being driven by cost of the 3 year degree (minimum $120K) Secondly, for those decreasing percentage of graduates who wish to undertake legal practice (either private or in government) ,I see a form of two year "training contract" (as in the UK being introduced which combines on the job experience (like articles) and PLT (which already occurs in a minority of cases now) Thirdly,it is not beyond probability as law degrees become more generalist for the professions to reinstitute more serious "Bar Exams" as in the US (and as presently occurs in a minor way to enter Bar Practice Courses in NSW ,Vic and Qld) The prospect of higher fees are only the tip of the problematic iceberg facing professional legal education which deserves a much broader discussion.

1
lost and disillusioned Wednesday, 04 March 2015

It seems that Science and Engineering disciplines have a better ROI (return on investment) than law, at least in the first year. It'll be interesting to see over a longer term such as 5 years or until the debt is paid. More analysis is needed!!

0
aisehino Tuesday, 03 March 2015

Contact hours are going down everywhere. Currently studying at UoN, we get 2 hours contact for contracts, and that is in a class of up to 50. You have to pick an unpopular time slot to get a small class. Criminal law last year had a 1 hour lecture and 2 hour seminar...

0
Poor student Tuesday, 03 March 2015

Right on.

0
Lawyers Weekly Tuesday, 03 March 2015

There is definitely an incentive to have Commonwealth support for any degree. A domestic Commonwealth-supported place in a JD program at the University of Sydney (which is a postgraduate law degree) costs $30,798 or about the same amount as an undergraduate law degree.

0
Sydney Barrister Tuesday, 03 March 2015

"Doctor of Medicine"? No doubt the writer means Bachelor of Medicine - it is not a PhD (or "vocational doctoral" degree) programme but a pass degree at bachelor level. The writer also needs to acknowledge that a law degree (be it an LLB or JD) at Sydney University requires an undergraduate degree in another discipline. The real cost therefore of a law degree from Sydney necessarily includes at least another three-year undergraduate degree. Is the cost of a law degree as big a problem (and I acknowledge it is a problem) as the proliferation of law schools? We have as many law schools as we have universities. That's a problem - not for the universities who benefit from the high tuition fees paid by students but for the students. Unlike doctors, lawyers have not protected the market for their services by restricting numbers. Only the very best (or otherwise very fortunate) will command fees over a lifetime commensurate with the outlay and income losses associated with acquiring an education in the law.

-1