We all know that a legal education can land the average law school graduate in up to six figures of debt (to be specific, on average, 2018 graduates racked up $110,137 in student debt), and we all know that egregiously high tuition costs are to blame. According to the latest data from U.S. News, the average cost of tuition and fees at private schools for the 2019-2020 academic year was about $50,000, while the average in-state and out-of-state cost of tuition and fees at public schools was $28,046 and $41,549, respectively.
But which law schools had the most costly tuition for the 2019-2020 academic year?
The Short List blog of U.S. News has compiled a ranking for that, and it’s not at all shocking that almost all 10 schools that made the list are private. At these law schools, the median tuition and fees for the 2019-2020 academic year was at least $$67,275. Only one public school made the list. Pop your collar if you can guess which one it is.
|
SCHOOL |
TUITION AND FEES (2019-2020) |
U.S. NEWS RANK |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Columbia University | $72,465 | 4 (tie) | ||
| New York University | $68,934 | 6 | ||
| University of Pennsylvania (Carey) | $67,998 | 7 | ||
| Cornell University | $67,833 | 13 | ||
| Duke University | $67,358 | 12 | ||
| University of Southern California (Gould) | $67,191 | 18 (tie) | ||
| Harvard University | $67,081 | 3 | ||
| Northwestern University (Pritzker) | $66,806 | 9 (tie) | ||
| University of Chicago | $66,651 | 4 (tie) | ||
| University of Virginia | $66,200 | 8 |
It’s certainly worth noting that the law schools that made this list are among the best in the country. At highly ranked schools like these, you get what you pay for, and in the law school world, that usually means a high-paying paid job as an attorney that will allow you to service your enormous debt obligations in a timely fashion — and to be quite frank, with up to six figures of debt to pay off, that’s priceless.
No matter where you decide to go to law school, make sure that you evaluate what your payoff will be when graduation time rolls around. Given the information that’s readily available online, will you be able to find a job? Will you be able to make ends meet while making payments on your law school loans? If you don’t think the answer to these questions are “yes,” then you may want to consider another school.
10 Most Expensive Law Schools [Short List / U.S. News]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.