Law Schools

Pre-Law Student Living In A Van To Cut Costs Before Law School

The van may or may not be located down by the river.

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Home sweet home.

Many people choose to take a gap year between their undergraduate and law school studies to travel the world and volunteer, but those gap years tend to be funded by their families. For others who take gap years before heading off to law school, they must think of creative ways to fund their travels and their cost of living.

One would-be UVA Law student has taken his cost savings to the extreme. He’s living in a van, which may or may not be located down by the river.

Meet Jeremy Kemp, who will begin his legal studies at UVA Law in Fall 2018. He graduated from UVA in May 2017 with degrees in environmental thought and practice and environmental science, and after traveling to South Africa and later to Florida to help with hurricane relief, he decided to hike the Pacific Coast Trail this spring. In order to fund his trip, he stopped paying his rent and instead bought a cargo van for $5,000, which he now lives inside. The Daily Progress has more on Kemp’s lifestyle:

Living in the van has worked well, save for a brief fire from candles he hung to try to give the industrial interior a bit of ambience. He gets most of his meals from the restaurants where he works, and keeps a few carrots and apples to chew on for snacks.

Friends have been supportive. One buddy let him park the van in his driveway while Kemp sawed wood for his bed and a small bench, and lent a bike while Kemp straightened out the van’s registration. Other friends offered their couches and kitchens.

Recent graduates of UVA Law have an average indebtedness of $155,117, but that’s not something that Kemp has to worry about. He’s been accepted to the school as a Dillard scholar, which means that he won’t have to pay a single cent on tuition. He also plans to apply to Yale, Penn, Duke, and NYU, but when you’re living in a van, free schooling sounds pretty great. A law degree, he says, will make him a better force for good: “I’ve thought about the lifestyle shear of going from the PCT to some law office. But the unifying principle is environmentalism.”

Congratulations to Jeremy Kemp on finding an ingenious way to fund his dreams before going to law school. Keep this up, and you’ll be set for the rest of your days.

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Prospective UVa law student sleeps in a converted van to save costs [Daily Progress]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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