22 Aug, 2007
List of Law School Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAP's)
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Pre-Law Discussions, Prelaw News Ann over at lawschoolexpert blog compiled an extremely helpful list of Law School Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAP's).
This is really helpful for those of you planning on attending law school on loans who are thinking about going into comparatively lower paying public service jobs.
More on LRAP's below...
What is an LRAP?
Here is the ABA's brochure on LRAP's. This is its definition:
- LRAPs are a type of back-end financial aid providing need-based aid to assist graduates working in lower-paying public service jobs - such as legal services programs or some government agencies - with the payment of their student loans. Approximately 56 law schools, 8 states and some public service employers have created LRAPs.
So basically, some schools pay back a portion of your loans for you sometime after you have graduated when you go into a certain type of job and meet certain other criteria.
Obviously, the conditions and rules of an LRAP are heavily dependent on the law school that you attend.
Why are LRAP's important?
You're going to hear a lot of people on message forums telling you to
go to the highest ranked school you can. This is generally not great
advice, but it is especially bad advice if you wish to go into public
service law where the pay is comparatively lower than the private sector.
Law school is so expensive and a student who simply goes to the "best" school to which he/she is accepted will likely not have much of a scholarship to help pay for that school. Doing so probably coerces a lot of students into giving up on their goals of public interest law by the time they see how much in loans they will accumulate.
So if public service jobs with relatively lower salaries interest you, you should probably give special consideration to the law schools with strong LRAP's in addition to the schools that give you a nice scholarship package.
If you are interested in public interest or government work and money is of concern to you, Ann's post can be a great place to start your search for potential law schools.
Thanks for compiling that, Ann. I'm sure that was a lot of work.