Okay, so I already illustrated the breakdown of the costs of applying to law school. I calculated that the costs can range from a few hundred and to five figures! If you’re cost-conscious like I am, you’re going to look for ways to curb your costs in your journey to the Juris Doctorate degree. Using all the information we’ve learned thus far, lets delve into how you can apply to law school for as little as possible – basically less than a grand. If you haven’t read my post on the costs breakdown, you can read it here. Ok, let’s jump into how you can apply to law school for less than $1,000.00
Prepare Thoroughly for the Process
LSAT
A potentially big cost is the LSAT. This damn test honestly can either cost you only $200.00 or it can balloon your costs astronomically if you do not prepare adequately.
Not only should you prepare for the contents of the LSAT, but you also need to prepare for the logistics of the test. Register months in advance and visit the testing center beforehand if you’re able. You can avoid all kinds of terrible and exorbitant fees if you plan well in advance the details for sitting for LSAT.
You should plan around the exact date of your exam as well. If you’d normally be working that day, take the 2 paid-days before test day and the LSAT day itself off. You do not want the the stress of working or losing two days worth of pay weighing on you leading up to the test.
You do not want to feel unprepared and run around the day before the test buying food and supplies just to cancel it anyway! Trust me. You’ll thank me. You won’t get a refund if you cancel your test days before the date. Prepare your bag a week in advance so you’re not tempted to cancel and reschedule.
Item Restrictions
If you have a restricted list of items that you can bring into the testing room. This doesn’t include your phone and other electronic devices! You need to plan in advance what you’re going to do with your phone when you’re in a room without your phone for half-a-day. Another test-taker paid the front desk $30 to watch her phone and purse and another paid the valet $20 for her car because there was no free parking nearby. You can buy some cheap store-brand granola bars and fill a bottle of water. You don’t need to buy a brand new bottle of Fiji water.
Determine Your Law School List Early
Knowing what schools you are applying to will save you loads of money. When you don’t know to which schools you are applying, you risk just randomly applying to a bunch of schools that you shouldn’t have. That’s obviously a waste of money. The frugal 0L and aspiring law student can plan for the application costs when they know exactly how many reports they will send.
You can purchase CAS package plans which allow you to purchase the LSAT and a set amount of CAS reports at a discount. When you plan your school list in advance, you can take advantage of these packages and save some cash.
Travel to Campus
Since you know your list so early, you can then book your travel to each school in advance as well, saving you money on plane tickets and accommodations that are bought in advance.
Although some schools may not know the exact date of their accepted student day, other have the day planned month ahead so you don’t have to buy any last minute plane tickets.
However, with the current online boom, you can probably attend get that experience for free from your couch.
Get Waivers For Everything
How about we just NOT pay for some things? Let’s get waivers for everything.
Application Fees
Don’t pay $85 dollars to apply to a school (I’m looking at you, Boston College and Boston University!) without requesting an application fee waiver first. After you take the LSAT and input your GPA information into your LSAC account, school may contact you and offer application fee waivers without requests.
If the schools you are applying to do not preemptively waive your application fee, call or email the office of admissions and get hem to provide a code for you to dodge paying hundreds of dollars in application fees. It’s not cute.
CAS
When you create a LSAC account, you can submit an application to get a waiver for the CAS fee, one take of the LSAT, and a few report fees.
However, the threshold for getting this fee waiver is an extremely low income. I mean poverty line low. I was not making a lot of money when I applied for the CAS waiver, and I was since rejected for the waiver.
All the fess are a lot of money for an entry-level salary, but a median entry-level salary is still too high to qualify for the waiver program.
Ask For Help!
You should ask family, friends, co-workers, your company, and other people in your social network for three kinds of help:
Cash Money
Seriously! There is no shame in asking your family and friends to assist funding your law school application costs. If you are applying while you are in school full-time, you may be stretched to your financial limit simply applying to 5-8 schools.
You can ask that they send you as low as $20 because any dollar helps, or that they can pay for an individual CAS report at $45 so you can apply to a wide variety of law schools. I’m sure there are plenty family members who are so proud at the idea of you being a lawyer. How about they put their money where their pride is, eh?
Mentorship
This type of support is underrated but can really guide your admissions journey. If you know an attorney or work with a bunch like I do, you should ask one if they are open to your occasionally picking their brain while you apply to law schools.
If you do not know any lawyers who have been through this process, you can ask your professor or pre-law advisor at your school. Your pre-law advisor will provide guidance whether you are in school or not. So even if you are ten years out of university, you can still utilize that source.
Having a mentor can help alleviate any stress from this process and also provide a first-hand perspective on your options. If this person’s career reflects a path that you are aspiring to pursue, they can give you honest advise on which school to apply to, which school to go to, and what the financial realities of having all that debt is like. This mentorship is free!
Emotional Support
This admissions process is so stressful and having a solid support network will make this journey less taxing. Receiving comfort can help you avoid costly mistakes an decisions.
It can be very easy to panic and make poor choices due to pre-law school stress. You don’t want to blanket apply 20 schools because you haven’t heard back from your reach school for 4 months, and you don’t want to simply accept the first admission offer because you want to stop the tension.
Reach out to a few friends and family members and ask them to support you by listening to you complain about the pre-law pain and by celebrating every step you take along the way.
I had friends big me up the whole time I was applying. I truly felt supported and that those around me wanted me to succeed as much as I wanted to succeed. You deserve that support too. Don’t go through this whole process by yourself.
Don’t Complicate Anything
A big potential cost of applying to law school is applicants over complicating the process by buying fancy LSAT courses, not conducting their own research, and paying for admissions consultants unnecessarily.
Self-study for the LSAT*
This is a controversial take, but from a purely financial perspective, you should and can self-study for the LSAT instead of dropping hunnids on courses. But it depends on what works best for you to get the highest LSAT score.*
If you can achieve 165+ on the LSAT by self-studying, then get the LSAT trainer and hit the practice tests ASAP. Save your coin, sis. However, if you know you can’t maintain the discipline and consistency to study for that high LSAT score, consider a cheap online course that is not self-paced so you can have some extrinsic accountability to motivate you.
Avoid having to write a non-diversity addendum
It is imperative that you don’t get mixed up in any legal or academic trouble that’s going to complicate your application. If you do have felonies or serious academic infractions, you may want to consider paying for an admissions consultation service because those sort of addenda are going to be addressed and may jeopardize your whole application.
But the key is to not get any of these blemishes on your record at all! Not only will you then have to strongly consider paying a consultant to advise you on your application, but you may not get accepted to some of your preferred school. You may find yourself applying to even more safety schools to make up for the risks. But remember that each CAS report costs $45.00!
Don’t cheat, get into fights on campus, ignore your traffic tickets, or go on extended leave if you can help it. The average applicant without these complications does not need to purchase admission consulting.
Do Your Research
To avoid all the potential pitfalls and costs of applying to law school, you need to conduct your own due diligence. You need to do research on your career goals, the schools that are the best fit for you, the potential advantages costs of each school, and the cost-benefit analysis of going to law school in the first place.
You’re on the right path by reading this post and coming to my blog. Your viewership feeds my ego – thank you – and empowers you to make good and informed choices on your way to becoming a lawyer. But there are other resources online such as reddit, top-law-school.com, and other law school blogs that you can use for research.
This research will prevent you from having to pay admission coaches or consultants stacks-a-cash to tell you what you can easily find online or in books about this process. There has been so many different resources written about this topic (like this book!) that you can exhaust FOR FREE to apply to law school.
Don’t be fooled. You don’t have to spend Benjamins in your 0L process.
