Law school and financial aid?

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>My wife is currently working as a paralegal and plans to start LS in about 4 years (the time I finish my UG). I was gandering around the local LS websites since they're the ones she will be applying to and each have their tuition and fees in the ~$45-50k/yr mark (for full-time JD programs) - the local publics are more expensive than the privates, though they are higher on ranking lists. I eventually get to the FA breakdown page and they all show ~20k in Gov't student loans and ~30k in Direct Graduate PLUS loans, so I have a few q's:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Is this typical of LS FA packages? Since they're all relatively the same price (+/- ~5k) she doesn't have the option to "shop around" to try to attend the cheapest one (that is ABA accredited anyway). Do LSs sometimes give need based institutional grants, or do they take you for everything since they can have you take out the PLUS loan to get their tuition paid right then? I understand scholarships would most likely disappear after the first year.</p></li>
<li><p>Does having current student loans that you're paying off affect your FA for LS? She has loans from UG that we are currently paying off that are less than 1 year of LS tuition, and will be considerably less with 4 more years of payments.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>When all said, if she were to take the full loans for all 3 years, then she would have an additional ~135-150k in student loans to repay. Is this realistically about what LS grads are doing to pay for their JD?</p>

<p>On a side note, one of the private LSs is self reporting their state bar passing rate at 70%. Is that good for comparative sake? Are good JD programs typically higher or lower than that? Couldn't find recent data on the other schools to compare.</p>

<p>Let me know if I should be posting this in the FA forum, thanks!</p>

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<p>Yes, law school financial aid generally comes in the form of a bunch of loans. Merit scholarships exist, but need based scholarships are much rarer than in undergrad.</p>

<p>A 70% bar pass rate is completely horrible. Remember, you have to pass the bar to practice as a lawyer; a 70% pass rate means that 30% of graduates from the school are not competent enough to use the degree they paid 150k for.</p>

<p>Is your wife going to law school as part of some program where the firm she works for will give her a job upon graduation? Because if she’s not, there are serious problems with the way she’s looking at law schools.</p>

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<p>

That’s what I suspected.</p>

<p>

The problems are with me then, not her. I was looking some of this stuff up today on my free time and haven’t even had the chance to talk to her about it yet. I think she suspects that she will need to take out a hefty amount in loans for LS, but I wanted to come here to gain a little more insight on the financial options or possibilities – but no, she would not be going to LS as part of an employer program/agreement. At least not as far as I know, but she may be under a different law firm in 4 years time, so we will definitely keep our eyes peeled for that type of benefit.</p>