Columbia Law School in New York City

This Law School is the Most Expensive in the Nation

Columbia Law School is now the most expensive law education in the country.

Cost of attendance, which includes tuition, living expenses and fees, at Columbia Law hit $110,450 for the current academic year, Reuters reports.

“It’s a pretty crazy large number,” said University of Iowa law professor Derek Muller in Reuters. “People will point out, ‘Well, there are scholarships.’ But not everyone gets very big scholarships, and very few get anything for cost of living.”

But Columbia isn’t the only law school with a hefty price tag. At neighboring New York University School of Law, the estimated annual cost this year hit $109,290. Harvard and Stanford both have costs of $107,000, with University of Chicago costing $106,000 and Georgetown Law costing $103,400 per year.

HIGH COST, HIGH REWARD

While Columbia Law is the most expensive law education in the U.S., the law school also boasts impressive employment rates. Columbia sent the largest percentage of its 2021 J.D. graduates into full-time legal jobs of any law school, according to American Bar Association data. About 65% of Columbia graduates also landed jobs at law firms with 500 or more lawyers, which tend to pay the highest salaries.

STANFORD AND YALE ANNOUNCE FREE TUTION FOR LOW-INCOME STUDENTS

This year, both Stanford and Yale Law committed to fully eliminating tuition payments for low-income students.

At Stanford, students whose family income is below 150% of the poverty line—$41,625 for a family of four, or $20,385 for an individual—are granted full-tuition scholarships.

Yale Law announced a similar financial aid program this year granting full-tuition scholarships for students with family incomes below the poverty line and whose assets are below $150,000.

“I want to provide as much support as we can to our highest need students,” Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken tells Reuters. “For students who come from below the poverty line, I want to be able to free them from the need to pay any tuition at all.”

Sources: Reuters, Reuters, Columbia Law School