Turning Your Law School Scholarship Negotiations Into Authentic Conversations

By Alice Foley, Associate Law School Consultant

Let’s get two things out of the way before we even get into this.

First: Scholarship negotiation is not an adversarial zero-sum game. You are not “against” the law school admissions teams in this, you are not trying to “win”. Scholarship negotiation is a conversation, it is relational.

Second: The best admissions officers did not get into law school admissions to tell people “no.” They started working in admissions to build the future classes of lawyers, to develop aspiring attorneys, to help you get into law school.  As much as they possibly can. They are also real human beings.

Keep these two things in mind. It’ll help. I promise.

Okay, on to the good stuff.

For anyone that’s worked with S. Montgomery Admissions Consulting, this should be no surprise. You should be authentic and honest in any scholarship conversation you have with a school. If you really cannot afford the contribution that a school expects you to make or if you’re not feeling great about the number of loans you’d need to take to pay for school, it never hurts to ask for more. But how do you have this conversation? 

Sidebar: You also should not be planning to have this conversation with all 14 schools that you were accepted into and received a scholarship from. At the end of the day, you can attend one law school (maybe two, but that’s for another day), and you are trying to make one law school as affordable as possible. At most, you can have this conversation with a couple of schools – like the second and third choice, if your first choice ends up remaining unaffordable.

If you are planning to do this all with 14 schools, you haven’t done your research yet. There aren’t 14 schools that are similar enough in program, fit, price, employment, etc. that you can realistically say “but they’re all my first choices!” It says, to me, that you still don’t really know what you want in your law school. 

Back to the topic at hand:

Start with why. Why do you want more money from this school? If you’re having the conversation with your first-choice law school, lead with that!

(We’ll be using Tulane and UT in our example today – you can fill in whatever schools you’re considering.)

“I would love to attend Tulane University; it has everything I’m looking for in a law school [you can be specific here – close to home, has a spectacular clinic, loved the vibe when you met with student org leaders, etc.]! Unfortunately, I cannot afford what it will currently cost me to attend. Is there a possibility for more scholarship or alternative funding? Thank you.”

Did another comparable school offer you more money? You can include that information too if you want. A really important note for adding in information about another offer: Don’t be a jerk. Don’t do this:

“UT gave me $10,000 more dollars, what can you do?! They think I’m worth more scholarship dollars, so are you going to give me more money?”

Seriously, don’t be this kid. You’re probably going to get your request politely declined, and the admissions team at Tulane will wish you the best of luck at UT… and then call their colleagues at UT and wish them luck with you. It’s a really, really small community, y’all.

Be respectful, kind, and grateful in all your communications with the admissions team (remember, they’re human and they want to help!). Instead of being the jerk above, be authentic – like we started, lead with why you really want to attend and why you may have to make another decision due to finances.

So now it may look something like this:

“I would really love to attend Tulane University; it has everything I’m looking for in a law school (specifics here). Unfortunately, I cannot afford what it will currently cost me to attend. Is there a possibility for more scholarship or alternative funding? I did get another offer from another school that included more merit scholarship. Is there any way for my application to be reconsidered for an additional merit scholarship that I wasn’t before? I really want to attend Tulane and would be so excited to commit if it were made more affordable.”

This is another place where it’s super helpful to think of the admissions folks as being on your team. The admissions team admitted you – they obviously want you to come to Tulane. You obviously want to come to Tulane. Why would you not take the help from these folks?! The admissions folks can be your biggest allies – they may know of some named scholarships that you could be a fit for, a professor that will hire 1L students as research assistants, or a graduate assistantship or fellowship that has a living stipend AND tuition assistance. When you send a message like the one above it makes them want to help you!

We’re going to take a quick detour and talk about reputation and character for a second. You start building your reputation and showing your character before you are even admitted. That admissions team remembers when they deal with rude or entitled-sounding applicants. They especially remember when those students commit to attending. Law schools, overall, are small tight-knit communities. The staff and faculty and administration all talk. At some point, you may need the help of other parts of the law school community, why set yourself up to be at a disadvantage by being rude?

Don’t be afraid to reach out to admissions if you just want to introduce yourself. Sometimes you may start building these relationships at a law school fair or LSAC forum, but it’s okay if you were a “stealth” applicant – you followed the directions, didn’t have a ton of questions, met any deadlines, basically just moved smoothly through the admissions process. You can still call or email admissions to introduce yourself!

One last key piece of information on scholarship negotiations: You are not entitled to more scholarship money. One more time – you are NOT entitled to more scholarship money. This means two major things. First, you should absolutely still advocate for making law school more affordable. Second, you have not failed if you do not get more scholarship money. Starting scholarship conversations from a place of entitlement just sets you up to be disappointed. If you come to the process without it, it's so much more exciting when you do end up getting an increase AND you won’t feel wronged when you don’t get an increase.

Finally, don’t ever forget that law school is not the only place for funding. Just because you didn’t get a merit or need-based scholarship from your school does not mean that your law school dreams are dead. It means that you’re going to be looking outside of the school for funding. Look into outside scholarships! Take agency over your law school funding, don’t rely solely on your law school itself. There are tons of ways to look for outside scholarships: we keep a list on our site, AccessLex’s Scholarship Databank, Google, the list goes on… 

The team at Barrier Breakers® Admissions Advising is here to support you through this law school application cycle! Whether it's through discounted advising for BIPOC, first-generation, and LSAC Fee Waiver applicants, our essay review services and courses, or just downloading our free Essential Guide to Applying to Law School, we're here to help make this process easier.

As always, feel free to reach out to us at hello@barrier-breakers.org with any of your questions! You can also submit a question to be answered on our weekly Break Into Law School® Podcast, streaming wherever your favorite podcast service is.