Better Understanding the Scope of Conditional Scholarship Programs Among American Law Schools

Abstract

As a result of the ABA’s revisions to Standard 509, Consumer Information, there is now a much greater universe of publicly available information about law school scholarship programs. In this article, I present what is now known about conditional scholarship programs based on a review of law school websites conducted between March 19 and July 21, 2013, from which I was able to compile a complete list of law schools with conditional scholarship programs, with only one-year scholarships, with good standing (or guaranteed) scholarships and with only need-based scholarships. The article includes an analysis of the information we have on conditional scholarship programs by looking at the prevalence of conditional scholarship programs among law schools across different rankings categories and by looking at the extent to which scholarship retention differs among law schools across different rankings categories. The article also looks at geographic “clumping” of law schools without conditional scholarship programs. The article concludes with some general thoughts on the impact of conditional scholarships across legal education. (This draft contains minor revisions based on a rechecking of law school webpages in July 2013 and some email exchanges. The draft also contains a url to a Law School Transparency webpage with a complete listing of law schools indicating whether or not the school had a conditional scholarship program in 2011-12, and if so, the number of students who received a conditional scholarship and the number who had the conditional scholarship reduced or eliminated.)

Keywords: conditional scholarships, scholarship retention, ABA Standard 509