Is Law School Costing You Too Much Money?

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Summary: Are you enrolled in law school? If so, you might be paying too much for tuition based on new data released this month. 

Even though law schools are accepting less-qualified applicants to fill empty seats in classrooms, those students are not getting good deals when it comes to paying for their law school education, according to a report from Bloomberg.

  

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The data that supports this theory was presented earlier this month at the Association of American Law Schools’ meeting in Washington.

The data suggests that people who performed poorly on the LSAT did not only pay more than others, they also received less for the money paid.

Jerome Organ, a professor from the University of St. Thomas School of Law, said that low-performing students tend to enroll in law schools that are ranked low.

To read more law school news stories, click here.

Organ, who led the study, said that they go to school “where the bar passage risk is higher and the employment outcomes are less inspiring.”

“We say law school is expensive, but it’s not expensive for everybody,” Organ said.

The research performed by Organ found that students who perform well on the LSAT can save money by going to a law school that appears further down the list of U.S. News and World Report’s rankings.

To go to a school ranked with an average of seventh on the list, students could attend for $40,000 or more per year if they scored a 165 or higher on the LSAT.

To read more about the LSAT, click here.

Some peer students who got the same scores, paid some $10,000 less per year to attend a school ranked 16th on the list.

Students who scored under 150 on the LSAT paid close to $32,000 per year, but went to schools that ranked close to 153 on the list.

Organ evaluated 146 ranked law schools to come up with average rank. He assigned a rank of 170 to another 49 unranked law schools.

“Is there a point in time where some of those students who are still coming to law school right now maybe decide that the investment risk is too great?” Organ asked. “We’ve lost the top end of the market and the bottom end has grown. What happens if the bottom end begins to shrink?”

To read more about the University of St. Thomas School of Law, click here.

Students who were able to register a test score of 165 or higher, but wanted to pay $10,000 less per year, enrolled in a school that ranked 52nd on the list.

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Source: Bloomberg