Getting everything you want from a product for a low price isn’t an easy thing to do. People try to do it every day, from women looking for the perfect eyeliner to families trying to find their dream house – and hopefully having enough money left to actually furnish it. We have become a society that is only truly satisfied when we can get a good deal.
When it comes to finding a law school with a strong academic program, great employer connections and low tuition, the search is just as difficult. In order to ease the burden of searching for a law school that meets your needs without crippling you with debt, we’ve compiled the 2009 guide to Best Value Law Schools.
This year, The National Jurist identified 65 law schools that carry a low price tag and are able to prepare their students perfectly well for today’s competitive job market. All of our data came from the Law School Admissions Council’s “Official Guide to ABA-approved Law Schools” 2009 Edition.
North Carolina Central University School of Law topped this year’s list — as it also did two years ago — followed by Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark School of Law and the University of Nebraska College of Law. Additionally, we chose to profile the University of Idaho College of Law and the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s William S. Boyd College of Law — two law schools that couldn’t be in more different settings, but offer students an excellent education at a reasonable price.
In determining what makes a law school a “best value,” we first looked at tuition, considering only public schools with in-state tuition less than $25,000 per year, and private schools with annual tuition that comes in under $30,000. We narrowed the playing field again by including only schools that had an employment rate of at least 85 percent upon graduation and a school first time bar passage rate that was higher than their state average. We then ranked the schools, giving greatest weight to tuition, followed closely by employment statistics.
Our formula for ranking the schools did not focus on bar passage rates as much as employment statistics, and for good reason. While bar passage rates do speak to an institution’s ability to prepare students for the intellectual challenges of the practice of law, the current economic state prompted us to give more weight to law schools that produce highly employable students. Also, we considered the rising number of law school graduates who choose to go into more “non-traditional” work, much of which does not require them to take the bar exam.
Beyond high achievement statistics and low tuition, each of the schools we profile below all seem to have a few things in common — small size, strong clinical programs and an emphasis on fostering relationships within the law school community. These factors aren’t easily measured by numbers, but are sometimes the most important in determining the true value of a legal education.
By focusing on the individual experience of each student and rooting their education in practice-based knowledge, the following Best Value Law Schools have found a way to offer a high-quality education at an extremely low cost.
