Choosing a Law School Based on Scholarships

Ann K. Levine offers advice to pre-law students about getting better law school scholarships.

onFebruary 20, 2014 at 11:11 AM

Law schools have been increasing their scholarship opportunities in order to lure applicants. Why? Because law school applicants are in demand. Applications are down yet again, and law schools are scrambling to fill their seats. (See TaxProf Blog for exact numbers and trends, year over year.)

As law schools compete for qualified applicants with better scholarships, it may be easier to consider criteria like debt alongside rank and prestige when choosing a law school. As part of this new trend, law schools are adding on scholarship programs to make attending law school more affordable. Villanova Law recently announced an initiative to add 50 full tuition scholarships for three years and in-state students at Penn State are being offered $20,000 per year as part of a new scholarship program.

Three years ago, the unfavorable terms for renewing these scholarships made headlines. Grade stipulations, which require students to exceed a certain grade point average or class rank, can make it very hard to renew a scholarship after the first year or semester. A scholarship with a strenuous grade stipulation can be misleading and ultimately unhelpful. (See Jim Chen’s article for how to calculate the risk of a scholarship with a grade stipulation).

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But because of the renewed effort to attract qualified applicants, schools have actually been attaching attainable and inviting grade stipulations to scholarships this year. Some schools have even been basing renewability on a more flexible version of the class ranking system. For example, now schools may allow you to keep part of your scholarship if your class ranking slips below the minimum requirement. In addition, if you are worried about the terms of the scholarship being renewed in your second and third years, you can try to negotiate these terms with the school. Be sure to have another scholarship offer with better terms to show them. This adds some “peer pressure” on the school to have an offer as enticing as a competitor school.

You can also, of course, try to negotiate the amount of the scholarship. (See this article for more specifics). The key is that you can’t appear to be playing the schools off of each other. The surest way to successfully negotiate a scholarship is to say, “Although I received $15,000 per year from ‘Comparable Law School,’ I would absolutely secure my seat at your law school if given $10,000 per year because I would be able to live with my sister and save money on rent.” Give the school some assurance that this is really the deciding factor for you, and show them you are being reasonable. This strategy will pay off with many schools, but pay attention to each school’s policies. Berkeley, for example, will entertain one offer for matching purposes and it must be from a small group of competitive schools.

Many people do forego attendance at higher ranked law schools in order to graduate from law school with less debt. One 3L at Boston College Law School turned down top 20 law schools because he was offered a 70 percent scholarship from BC. “Picking a law school is a balancing test, in my opinion, between location, national prestige, regional prestige, and scholarship money. Scholarship money is the most important thing, which led me to choose BC over UT (which offered only a small scholarship). Due to the fact that I will be graduating without debt, I have the freedom to pursue a type of law that I know I will enjoy, and about which I feel passionate,” he said.

Another attorney with 15 years of experience said, “Because of my scholarship to my hometown law school, I didn’t have to work at a big firm and start at a 6-figure income to feed the student loan monster. I started at a small family law firm making $40K per year and paid back my loans from college and law school within seven years.” She felt the connections she made in the local market and the lasting friendships with people she met in law school made attending a lower ranked school on scholarship the right choice.