Going to law school can be many things: a chance to move far away, expensive, or even a father-son bonding opportunity. But ultimately, it’s an investment. When you’re choosing which school to saddle yourself with debt over, weighing the pros and cons of each can be complicated if you don’t know how to sort your options.
You could go with the prestige route… although that hasn’t had the best results for USNWR. We recommend an outcome based approach — which schools are most likely to put you in the position you’d like to be in once you cross that stage? Luckily for you, Law.com reports on a study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce that sorts law schools based on the return on investment you’re likely to get from your fancy piece of paper — that is how much graduates typically had left over after paying their student loans. Here is their top ten:
- 1 – Columbia
- 2 – UPenn
- 3 – UChicago
- 4 – Cornell
- 5 – Stanford
- 6 – Harvard
- 7 – Northwestern
- 8 – UVirginia
- 9 – Duke
- 10 – Yale
Shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the top 10 consists of names you’d usually associate with the T14. There are two big take aways.
As good a heuristic as this list poses, reality can complicate things. Even if you do get in to Harvard, do you really want to suffer through Massachusetts’ cold winters? Can you bear UPenn if it means dodging Eagles fans? ROI is a very important thing to consider when selecting a law school, but the nature of those returns are heavily dependent on your values. If traveling across the coast to learn Erie doctrine means leaving your family behind, that might not be the right decision for you. In that case, check out a ranking system that lets you plug in the value of inputs and outputs. Like ours.
Second, you could end up living paycheck to paycheck even if you’re clearing 6 figures:
About one-fifth of those who responded to the survey (21%) said they would not be able to come up with $1,000 in the event of an emergency, with such financial insecurity disproportionately affecting Black, Latinix and American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander law graduates.
Listen, if you’ve already put in the work of familiarizing yourself with RAP at a six figure school, do yourself the favor of investing some time and money to develop financial literacy. Unaccounted for money has a magical propensity to transform itself in to things you don’t need or remember wanting.
Make informed decisions! Your future self is depending on it.
Where Do Law Grads Get the Most Bang for Their Buck? [Law.com]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.