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How I Received Need-Based Financial Aid For Law School As A Transfer Student

It is important to consider programs like these when planning where and when to attend law school.

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Ed. note: Please welcome Jordan Rothman to our pages. He will be writing about personal finance, and the interesting strategies he used to pay off all $197,890.20 of his student loans before the age of 30.

When I first considered attending law school, I was astounded by the astronomical cost of a legal education.  It seemed like I could buy a house with the amount of money I would have to shell out to attend law school, and I couldn’t believe how basically every law school from the best to the worst charged an exorbitant amount in tuition and costs.  I knew that merit scholarships existed to help cover the cost of law school, and I read many articles on this website and others about the trade-offs between attending a better law school and receiving a scholarship from a lower-ranked institution.  However, as my own experience demonstrates, you do not always need to decide between scholarships and status, and you can receive money even if you are an average applicant to a decent law school.

If you are like me and you relied on need-based financial aid to pay for college, you are probably familiar with the annual pain of filling out the FASFA, CSS Profile, and any number of financial aid forms.  As it turns out, if you can bear this process for an additional three years, you can actually obtain a sizable amount of need-based financial aid for law school too.  Of course, not all law schools have need-based financial aid programs, and some institutions would rather sink their money into merit scholarships to boost their admissions stats and “juice” their USNWR rankings.  However, other law schools are more philanthropic, and provide financial aid to certain candidates.

My personal story is instructive on this point.  I started my legal education at Washington and Lee University School of Law, where I was admitted off the waitlist.  I did not receive any financial aid for my first year of law school, and I had to pay full sticker price at W&L Law.  Of course, the cost of living in Lexington, VA, is unbelievably low, but tuition and fees still cost a hefty sum.  After my first semester, the 1L “grade gods” blessed me with good enough marks to transfer to Georgetown University Law Center.  I asked W&L Law if they would throw money my way to keep me from transferring, but they cried broke, likely because they had spent all their money on merit scholarships to increase their USNWR ranking.

However, I applied as a transfer student for need-based financial aid from Georgetown Law, and unbelievably, I was granted financial aid to cover 40 percent of the cost of tuition.  I had to fill out all the financial aid forms before I was even accepted to Georgetown Law, but this effort paid off, and I was awarded around $30,000 in financial aid for that first year.  I reapplied for financial aid during my last year of law school, and my award was remarkably increased to cover the cost of inflation.  Georgetown Law even let me keep the lion’s share of my summer associate money, and left my financial aid mostly intact despite this windfall.

Georgetown Law also provided me with a work-study job that allowed me to borrow less debt for living expenses.  There were a lot of work-study jobs around campus, and students in work-study positions were employed by the library, administrative departments, and in other parts of the community.  I was fortunate to be employed by Department of Residence Life to work in the package room and at the front desk of the on-campus residence hall, and I enjoyed working both jobs.

Whereas work-study jobs in college paid around minimum wage, the work-study job I secured at Georgetown Law paid more than twice the minimum wage.  By working this job, I made enough money to pay for textbooks, food, alcohol, and just about everything else that a law student needs.  Also, my gig and most other work-study jobs did not require constant attention, so I was able to study for much of my time on duty, which was an added benefit.

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All told, my financial aid and work-study gig paid for about half the cost of attending Georgetown Law.  I still needed to borrow an unbelievable amount of money to finance my law school education, but financial aid from Georgetown Law helped lessen my student debt burden and allowed me to pay off my student loans while I was still in my 20s.

I have not seen too much discussion on the internet about need-based financial aid programs in law schools, and of course, these programs only benefit individuals with specific financial backgrounds.  However, it is important to consider them when planning where and when to attend law school.  For instance, if you head straight to law school from college, you will have a higher likelihood of qualifying for these programs since your personal income will essentially be zero.  However, if you wait a few years before applying to law school, and work in a high-income field, you might not qualify for financial aid.  Furthermore, the existence of need-based financial aid programs at higher-ranked law schools might provide an additional incentive to transfer law schools, since financial aid can be awarded to transfer students.

Most importantly, the existence of need-based financial aid programs also alters the oft-discussed trade-off between accepting merit scholarships and enrolling in a better law school.  From my own experience, it seems that higher-ranked law schools are the types of institutions that typically have need-based financial aid programs.

And if you have the right background and are accepted into such a law school, you don’t have to make the age-old choice between attending a better law school and accepting a merit scholarship elsewhere.

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Jordan Rothman is the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a personal finance website discussing how he paid off all $197,890.20 of his college and law school student loans over 46 months of his late 20s. You can reach him at Jordan@studentdebtdiaries.com.

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