How Law Schools are Helping the Elite

Brian Tamanaha

In 2010, tuition at Yale was $48,340, plus $18,900 in estimated living expenses. About 45 percent of the incoming students paid full price. In rounded terms, nearly 25 percent received a remission of half or more of tuition, 29 percent received less than half, and no student received a full tuition scholarship. At Harvard a bit more than half of the entering JD students paid full price; tuition was $45,026, with estimated living expenses of $22,874. At Stanford half of the students paid full price; tuition was $44,121, plus $23,739 in living expenses. Harvard and Stanford handed out a number of full scholarships, but otherwise their scholarship numbers were in the same range as Yale’s. The top schools, with some variation, distribute scholarships roughly along these lines: 50 percent of the students pay full fare, 25 percent get a discount of half or more, 25 percent get less than half off, and a handful of students enjoy full scholarships.



The key dynamic involves the students who are made to pay full fare. Typically, they will be in the bottom half of the LSAT/GPA profile of students admitted to the JD class at any particular school. The highest ranked schools have students with the highest LSAT/GPA combination—with LSAT numbers steadily falling as you travel down the ranking. For example, an applicant with a 171 LSAT would have placed in the bottom 25 percent of the class at Yale, but in the top 25 percent at Michigan, Penn, Berkeley, Virginia, Duke, and so on.



An applicant in this position would be confronted with a tough choice: go to Yale and pay full price ($50,750 this year), or attend a lower down school, say Duke ($44,722), with a tuition discount of half or more; Yale at $150,000 tuition over three years or Duke at $70,000. When you add in projected expenses, the final price would be $207,000 for a degree at Yale versus $118,000 for a degree at Duke. (The numbers work out similarly for a choice between Harvard and Duke.)



Applicants from wealthy families who can help financially wouldn’t hesitate to go to Yale. But applicants from middle class families—school teachers, middle management, small business owners, solo practitioner lawyers (parents who exhausted their resources helping their child make it through college without debt)—will find the Duke offer hard to turn down. Evidence of this wealth effect can perhaps be seen in the fact that, although its tuition is among the highest in the country (and the school rarely awards full scholarships), only 73 percent of Yale 2011 graduates had law school debt—among the lowest in the country. (At most schools 80 to 95 of graduates have law school debt.)



This might not seem like a major concern because a student who goes to Duke will have an outstanding career anyway. That is correct as far as it goes, but there is more. Law is a highly elitist, credential-oriented profession. Harvard and Yale degrees open more doors, more easily than do Duke degrees. Consider that in the history of the United States Supreme Court, seventeen Justices attended Harvard, ten attended Yale, and seven attended Columbia; no other law school counts more than three; Duke has none. It is easier to land elite clerkships, choice positions in the Department of Justice, and a law professor job out of Harvard and Yale. Although a Duke degree is an elite credential that opens many doors, especially to corporate law jobs, the difference in career opportunities compared to Harvard and Yale is not negligible.



Imagining a choice between Yale and Duke is misleading because the downside does not seem so bad. But the phenomenon goes much further. Versions of this same choice play out all the way down the law school hierarchy, often with more dramatic differences at stake. Applicants at the bottom LSAT quartile point (166-168) who would be required to pay full price at Michigan, Penn, Cornell, Duke and Northwestern, would get substantial tuition reductions to attend any school ranked 20th or lower. Pay full tuition at Vanderbilt or attend Iowa, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Emory, etc., at a big discount? Frequently the pertinent choice will be between local alternatives. An applicant who scores 165 on the LSAT would be in the bottom 25 percent of the class at UCLA but in the upper 25 percent at Loyola Marymount. Pay full tuition at the former or get at least half-off at the latter? In all of these examples, the disparity in career opportunities entailed in the choice is considerable.



Applicants from families with money would attend the better school without hesitation. Applicants from middle class families will be faced with the agonizing decision of whether taking on mountainous debt will be worth the advantages gained from going to the higher school. Some will make the leap to the higher school. When making this choice, they are placing a bet that they will land a corporate law upon graduation to pay off the loan (regardless of whether that is a job they desire). Some applicants with modest means will, reluctantly, select the lower school at a discount. They can, of course, go on to have stellar legal careers anyway, but the higher alternative would have laid an easier path with better opportunities.



In this manner, the tuition-scholarship relationship to the higher-versus-lower-school choice constitutes an allocation matrix that uniformly funnels wealthy applicants to the higher school, securing the attendant advantages, while people with less financial means divide between higher and lower. Multiply this out by tens of thousands of like decisions each year and the effect is large. The pricing structure of law schools thereby helps the wealthy in America further consolidate their grip on elite legal positions.



Let me end by getting more concrete, and personal, for any law professors who might be reading this. A bunch of colleagues of my generation and older are from middle class backgrounds. Their smarts got them into elite law schools, which they easily financed with loans that weren’t too scary in size. Their elite degrees, in turn, opened the door to the legal academy: the substantial bulk of law professors today are graduates from top 10 law schools.



Ask yourself this: If you were an applicant today facing this choice, what would you decide. Think about it. You might decide to go to Harvard or Yale anyway—but that comes with at least $150,000 in debt (assuming you keep it down by working at law firms during the summers). A stint at a corporate law firm after graduation would lie ahead. If you couldn’t bear to endure several years in a firm, the loan payments that remain will cut a large slice out of your professor pay for three decades.



You might decide, on the other hand, to pass on Harvard and Yale, and instead attend an excellent law school like Northwestern, Georgetown, UCLA, or Vanderbilt, with a substantial scholarship. That would be prudent, leaving you with a much lower debt. Unfortunately, your chance of ever becoming a law professor would greatly diminish.



As for me, knowing my conservative personal finances, I’m not sure I would attend law school at all.



A generation ago, when we were coming up, a middle class aspirant to a legal career would not be put to this choice. But we impose it on current and future generations. And it seems that an inevitable consequence of this—as a greater proportion of middle class folks are funneled downward in the law school hierarchy—is that more and more elite legal positions will be in the hands of the wealthy.