There are a lot of considerations prospective law students have to evaluate before deciding to take the plunge and go to law school. Two of the largest factors — well, after deciding you really do want to practice law — that need to be balanced are the enormous amount of money law students have to pony up and the quality of the educations they’ll receive. There are many ways to assess the relative quality of a legal education, and all of them can be subjective, but one generally accepted stand-in for “quality” is the school’s rank in the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings.
In an attempt to create a matrix that looks at both a law school’s cost as well as its ranking in USNWR, Law.com has created a list of the cheapest law schools that still manage rankings in the top 100 (there are 205 accredited law schools):
We’ve mashed together the latest nonresident tuition and fees data from the American Bar Association (which law schools provide to it) with the U.S. News numbers to present the 20 cheapest law schools ranked in the U.S. News top 100.
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So without any further ado, here are the Top 10 law school that rank in the top half of law school:
| Cheapest Law Schools In The USMWR Top 100 | |||
| Rank | School | Tuition | USNWR Standing |
| 1 | University of Tulsa College of Law | $25,254 | 82 |
| 2 | BYU Law | $25,360 | 46 |
| 3 | University of Cincinnati College of Law | $29,010 | 72 |
| 4 | Arizona Law | $30,326 | 48 |
| 5 | Oklahoma Law | $32,288 | 72 |
| 6 | Texas A&M School of Law | $34,498 | 92 |
| 7 | Wayne State Law School | $34,850 | 100 |
| 8 | Arkansas Law | $35,017 | 77 |
| 9 | Nebraska Law | $35,841 | 57 |
| 10 | Florida International University | $36,658 | 100 |
Check out Law.com for the rest of the Top 20 Cheapest Law Schools.
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Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).