Scroll Top

Phone: 1.800.296.9656        Email: circulation@cypressmagazines.com 

Brooklyn to reimburse some tuition to unemployed grads

Related Articles

Chalk up another innovative idea for Brooklyn Law School. The same school that has cut tuition by 15 percent, is offering a tuition guarantee and allows students to earn a J.D. in as little as two years, will now give future graduates who can’t land a job a 15 percent tuition reimbursement.

“It is making a good bet on our students,” said President and Dean Nick Allard, who is starting his fourth year at the private school. “This is part of our effort to make law school more affordable and to address the needs of our students individually.”

The Bridge to Success program will provide jobless graduates with a lump sum payment of around $20,000 nine months after graduation. But the graduates must have been working with the school’s career services office and have taken the bar exam. Plus, it only applies to students who enrolled in law school this summer or will start in the future.

Allard said the vast majority of Brooklyn graduates are employed nine months after graduation.  The school’s NALP employment rate has been 90 percent the last two years. And most graduates who were not employed within nine months were not working with the school’s career services office, he said.

“Most of our students will find meaningful professional employment,” Allard said. “We wanted to create an incentive for few who do not to stay in touch with us so we can help them get to where they want to be.”

Allard believes the number of unemployed graduates will drop as students work with the school’s career services staff.

He said the Bridge to Success program will also encourage graduates to take some risk to pursue different employment paths. He said some graduates feel financial pressure to settle for jobs that may not fit their interests. Under the program, graduates will have a financial cushion that will allow them to be more patient in their job search.

Anne Levine, a law school consultant, said Brooklyn’s new initiative is just one of many such efforts by law schools to figure out what will drive consumers — in this case, prospective law students.

“Schools get a little smarter every year,” she said. “We will see schools follow Brooklyn’s lead and get more creative to get competitive.”

Brooklyn’s Bridge to Success program comes on top of other recent initiatives.

“This is not a one off gimmick,” Allard said. “It is part of a piece of a plan for legal education in a new world. For too long legal education was passive and bureaucratic. We are taking a different approach. We believe the best education is dynamic, continuous and customized.”

Starting with this year’s entering class, Brooklyn Law School shifted money away from merit scholarships in order to provide every student with a 15 percent tuition discount.

“When you reduce tuition, you deflate the fake sticker price,” Allard said. “We have made a genuine and significant effort to reduce the skyrocketing cost of legal education.”

For the past four years, Brooklyn Law School has provided more scholarship money per student than any other law school in the country, based on estimates by preLaw magazine. ABA data shows that in 2013-2014 the school gave scholarships to 87 percent of its full-time students with a median amount at $30,600. With tuition at $54,246, that represents an estimated 49 percent discount for all full-time students, which is not an unusual discount percent in this market.

Allard said Brooklyn is able to make such bold financial moves because, with $133 million, it has one of the largest endowments of all law schools.

He is not concerned that graduates may forgo employment to secure the lump sum payment 

“I don’t worry about our students gaming the system and ripping us off,” he said. “I worry that they feel [their legal education] is a good value. They don’t want a check. They want a job.”

Jack Crittenden

Jack Crittenden

Digital Magazine
Newsletter Signup
OUR SPONSORS

Empowering Your Law Career

    Sign up now to get all the information and advice you need to succeed in law school and your law career in the United States

Sign Up to get a Free Digital Magazine!

Get unlimited access

Get a premium subscription to the National Jurist for less than $2 a month.