MinnLawyer Blog

We’ve had a good discussion on this blog about the need for a lower cost means of obtaining a legal education (or at least one that would leave students in less debt). I just happened on this post on Above the Law about the success a newly founded California law school has in its strategy to offer full-tuition scholarships to its entire entering class. The school — UC Irvine — which received 2,741 applications for the 68 slots in that class — had an acceptance rate of 4 percent, Above the Law reports. (By way of comparison, Yale has a 7 percent acceptance rate.)

In its press release, the school translates its low acceptance rate to mean it is the most selective law school in the country. I’m not quite sure if that’s an accurate inference. I suspect the pool of students applying to Yale or Stanford might be different from the pool of students trying to win free tuition at a newly founded law school. We don’t know, for example, how many of the latter group went to Vegas and putting everything on seven red after entering the “contest” for a free legal education. On the other hand, I am sure there were enough serious students who saw the school as a good deal to ensure that the first class was a pretty good one.  Even if you don’t get a job at a traditional firm, there are certainly worse things in the world than being a 20-something and hanging out your shingle in Californ-i-a with no student debt.

I don’t suspect there will be any tuition-free offers from Minnesota law schools anytime soon. I am afraid here in the Gopher State we are left to look elsewhere for a solution to the high price of a legal education.