Law Schools, Money

Law School To Issue 50% Tuition Refunds To Grads Who Can't Find Jobs

Which law school is making such a revolutionary step in the right direction?

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A law degree used to be considered a professional golden ticket, but that’s simply not the case anymore. Ever since the recession, things have been different for new lawyers. For the better part of the past decade, law school employment prospects (or the extreme lack thereof) coupled with graduates’ massive debt loads have made headlines across the country, if not the world.

Many law schools have tried to adjust to the legal profession’s new normal. Be it through smaller class sizes to lessen the number of graduates entering a field already flooded with new lawyers struggling to find employment or tuition cuts to entice prospective students into taking on less debt, it now seems that law schools are willing to do anything to remain in business, even if it means putting a dent in their diminishing profits.

It took seven years of middling employment statistics for one law school to finally come up with the bright idea of offering partial tuition reimbursements to graduates who were unable to find full-time legal employment within nine months of graduation. Brooklyn Law School announced in July that starting this coming academic year, it would repay 15 percent of total tuition costs to its jobless graduates. But when someone attends the law school without any scholarships or grants, pays full freight, and later finds himself in debt to the tune of six figures, is a 15 percent refund really enough?

One law school doesn’t think so, and it’s decided to offer its graduates a 50 percent tuition refund should they find themselves unemployed nine months after graduation.

There’s just one catch.

The only law school that’s willing to do such a thing is the University of Law, which is located in the United Kingdom. It’s likely that the school was only willing to make such a headline-grabbing offer because it was so confident in its employment outcomes — last measured at a 97 percent rate — that it had little reason to believe that any of its graduates would be able to take the law school up on its generous 50 percent tuition refund.

Here’s more information on the University of Law’s ULaw Employment Promise program:

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Addressing head-on key student concerns such as employability, graduate debt and value for money, the new direction taken by ULaw is the first of its kind in the sector and is set to revolutionise the legal training industry.

“More than just a degree, today’s students want a clear return on their investment. For law graduates, this means one thing: securing a training contract or a full time job upon graduation. Our position as the preferred training provider to over 30 major law firms and our experience in training highly skilled law practitioners give us the confidence and the assurance that our graduates will be in employment within nine months,” said ULaw CEO David Johnston.

To Americanize the University of Law’s refund offer, this is as if Columbia Law School, which has long reigned as king over all law school employment statistics for years on end with more than 90 percent of its graduating classes moving on to full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required, were to offer a 50 percent tuition refund to the pittance of its class that was somehow unable to land a job nine months after graduation.

If Columbia Law were willing to make such a revolutionary move, just imagine what other law schools would be inspired to do. Perhaps the entire T14 would institute programs like this, and lower-ranked law schools would at least aspire to meet or beat Brooklyn Law’s 15 percent tuition refund offer. It’s just a thought, and perhaps one that’s too hopeful.

After all, if more law schools in the United States realized that students expected returns on their investments, then we likely wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

The University of Law commits to graduate employment guarantee in 9 months, or 50% of tuition fees back [University of Law]
UK law school promises 50% refund to grads who can’t find jobs [Mashable]

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Earlier: Which Law School Is Offering Partial Tuition Refunds For Students Who Can’t Get Jobs?

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