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.This is made all that much worse because the legal profession is probably the most elitist, credential-focused profession out there. There really is a notable difference between a Yale, Harvard, or Stanford degree and anything else, even a degree from Michigan, currently ranked #7. (Just look at the all Harvard-Yale Supreme Court.)
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....
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.
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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.
This credential reliance is especially pronounced in a recession. A large portion of my friends, Michigan graduates all, are currently unemployed. Oh, and ask me about the clerkship hunt some time. (But maybe wait a couple years. Thanks.) Then when you get maybe past the top 10, top 20 schools? Huge difference. As Tamanaha points out, Yale (1)/Duke (11) is a common financial choice. His Vanderbilt (T-16) comparisons were Iowa (27), Wisconsin (T-35), North Carolina (T-30), and Emory (T-30). These ranking differences are not huge numerically, but the opportunities are hugely disparate.
Note also that this is actually compounded on what we typically discuss when we talk about privilege based on class - getting a good elementary-high school education, having books in the home and time to read in summer, and these days, being able to pay for AP classes and extracurriculars (itself pretty absurd). Of course the same argument applies to college tuition, but everyone knows about that. And of course people in elite colleges more often get into these law schools in the first place.
The people graduating from these law schools go on to very powerful positions in government and eventually the federal judiciary. People often decry the fact that all the members of Congress are rich. Well, graduates of the top law schools make up the rest of the government. Seriously, lots and lots of lawyers there, mostly from elite schools, and due to crazy tuition hikes, they'll mostly have been born well off. Like all matters of privilege, it's near impossible for us to fully appreciate how our worldview has been shaped by our wealth, even when we know enough to try.
