How to Prepare Yourself for the Cost of Law School

Since an average law school education will run you around $150,000 from beginning to end, preparing yourself financially beforehand is a wise choice of action. But what can you really do to get prepared besides bracing yourself for a huge load of debt? Well, the obvious answer is simply save up your money. For most of us, however, saving up that kind of money will take decades, so what's the next best thing to do? The answer is education. Do your research and find out different ways to offset the costs.

The first thing to do when beginning the process of preparing yourself for the cost of law school is to find out if you qualify for any grants or scholarships. These are great ways to pay for your legal education because if you are awarded either a scholarship or a grant, you don't have to pay it back. Can you imagine completing law school with no debt?! As you might guess, such opportunities are hard to come by, but don't let that keep you from trying. Both grants and scholarships are generally awarded based on both need and merit, and your school's financial aid office will be a good source of information for such opportunities. Consider investigating local religious, minority, and business organizations as well as you comb the streets for scholarships. If you are working for a big company, you may want to find out if they offer any tuition assistance. If your receipt of a law degree makes you a more valuable, effective employee, they might consider paying for your education or at least helping out.

The second thing to do is find out if your school offers any work-study programs. These often Federally-funded programs are made available to second and third year students and they will require that you work (usually on campus) in order to offset the cost of tuition. If you're a first year student, you'll have to wait a year to qualify for this one; your school expects you to focus on school only for your first year!

If these first two options don't work out, head back to your school's financial aid office and find out how most students pay for their tuition. Your financial aid office will also help you estimate other costs such as books and housing, and they will likely have information on the cheapest ways to pay for both of these. If you've reached this point, you will probably have to take out a loan along with the other 80 percent of your classmates. Education loans granted by the government generally have the lowest interest rates, so this will probably be the way to go.

In summary, the best way to prepare yourself for the cost of law school is to explore all of your options well ahead of time. This will give you a chance to apply for some of the better options that won't leave you with quite as much debt when all is said and done.

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