The previous post reminded me of my experience with scholarships offered directly from the law school.

When a person is accepted to law school, the offer to attend that school most likely includes a scholarship offer from that school. The scholarship offer usually says something to the effect of "stay in the top xx% (usually 20%-25%) and you can renew that scholarship in subsequent years." I thought when I received something similar to this from schools to which I was accepted that the schools thought that I would easily rank in that top xx% or so of their incoming students and that the school were setting me up to succeed in keeping this scholarship.

But through speaking with some of my law school friends, I can say that it seems like every single person in my 1L class had a scholarship like this contingent on rankings. At my school, just based on the evidence I have, at it's lowest there had to be 50% of incoming 1L's receive a similar scholarship in varying dollar amounts (see Kent's official policy here).

So what does this mean for an incoming law student?
I do not know how scholarships are done at other schools, but I assume it is similar to my school. If 50% receive a scholarship contingent on making the top 25%, that does not bode well for keeping that scholarship (I guess depending if you're a half empty or half full sort of person) as half of the 1L's with this type of scholarship will inevitably lose it.

My main point is this: do not count on any scholarship money based on gpa or rank offered from your school to last past the first year when weighing the economics of law school and deciding what school to attend. Consider that any scholarship you were offered has a pretty good chance of being lost by your second year just based on the numbers. Remember all of those students who got scholarships are smart, motivated, and gunning for that top 25%. There is just no way to predict whether you will end up in that top 25% for sure so you have to at least consider the chance of not having the scholarship you were offered past 1L.