I have seen a lot of these articles on student debt, and they use the most bizarrely unsympathetic subjects. The meat of this article is not that student loans are bad, but rather that you shouldn't go to law school (or any graduate program, in my opinion), without first deciding what you want to do and your priorities in life. It's way too common to see people watch a lot of Law & Order and go straight through from college (my wife calls them "K-JD's") and then realize that $200k of debt is a lot and they really don't like working 12-14 hours a day at the beck and call of clients. Your first 80 hour work week sleeping with your Blackberry under your pillow is a shock, and you should really get it out of the way and decide if you're okay with it before you're $200k in the hole.