And if they make less than $60,000, they pay nothing – the loan is forgiven
Lorne Sossin was the dean of Osgoode Hall Law School until his term ended last spring. (He remains on the faculty.) During his tenure, he introduced a program that provides an interesting model for other law schools, the Income Contingent Loan Program. The program provides students with the total cost of tuition for all their law school studies – and they don’t have to start paying it back until a year after they graduate. If they make more than $80,000 a year, they must pay back the full share over a 10-year amortization period. If they make between $60,000 and $80,000, the alumnus pays back only part of the share.
The pilot project, funded by an initial $1-million investment, was first offered in 2014 to five students – it has since increased to seven students a year. We were trying to address how to broaden the pool of people who apply for law school because, often when we talk about accessibility, we’re just talking about among those who are applying, Sossin says. We never count those who don’t even send in the application because they think there’s no way I could take this kind of debt on.
Andrew Hills, who graduated from Queen’s this year, is tightening up his finances to pay back about $100,000 in loans
Donkers, in fact, wouldn’t be a student at Osgoode if it hadn’t been for the project. I applied to law school knowing that, unless I got into Osgoode and unless then I also got into the ICLP program, which at that point had only been around for one year, I wasn’t going to go.
U of T offers a post-graduation debt-relief program, and the University of Manitoba has debt relief available for students who remain in the province to practise.
Other law programs do offer some form of loans or debt relief for a limited number of students
However, these programs don’t necessarily address the overall issue of the cost itself or what happens to students who, while they don’t qualify for special assistance, may also not be able to fully cover the cost of law school itself.
