The Cost and Financing of Legal Education

Abstract

While the decade of the 1990s produced tremendous growth and significant improvements in legal education, by the start of the twenty-first century a number of factors had combined to create great challenges for the legal education community. Some of the most important are

.. a very substantial increase oyer the 1990s in the tuition charged J.D. students, at both private and publicly assisted law schools .. a similarly substantial increase in the expenditures on their programs by ABA-approved law schools .. a significant reduction in the relative level of financial support provided by state governments to public higher education in general, and to publicly assisted legal education in particular .. a dramatic increase in the amount of borrowing by law students and in the average indebtedness of graduating law students

This paper sets forth the facts concerning these developments and then discusses some actions that law schools are taking, or might consider taking, to counter their negative impact.

Keywords: law schools, legal education, costs, financing, inflation, tuition increases, tuition discounting, law school expenditures, law student borrowing, loan debt, managing debt, entry-level salaries

JEL Classification: I21, I22, I28, K19, K39