Top Law Schools

Never posted before, but I’ve seen some people get good advice on here and I’m hoping for a bit of the same.

With financial aid/scholarships and my assets, given the COA for each school, I could leave law school with the following amounts of debt:

Stanford: $130,000
Columbia: $95,000
NYU: $70,000
UVA: $0 (yay!)

I’m going to do public interest work, so I’ll be on LRAP, and all three schools that involve debt have really good LRAPs. Hoping to do prisoners’ rights or criminal appellate work, so clerkship options matter somewhat but aren’t the deciding factor. Also, I live in NYC now, but my partner is from the Pacific NW and we’re hoping to get back there as soon as possible after school.

I'd personally take UVA because to me no debt is always better psychologically, but any of these choices are perfectly acceptable and you wouldn't be wrong to take NYU or Stanford.

If goal is PI in Pacific NW, SLS at $130K on it's amazing LRAP would be a no-brainer for me

Stanford makes the most sense to me. Especially for high level PNW/PI work. Congrats!

Your post makes clear the debt difference between SLS and UVA, but not the difference in price. I think knowing whether and to what extent UVA leaves you with $ left over is important for giving a rec here.

I voted for Stanford because with their great LRAP the debt probably wouldn't be crippling and for PI on the west coast it would be fantastic. If I were in your shoes though it would be hard to walk away from the chance to come out of law school without any debt.

If you're 100% committed to public interest go to Stanford and take out max loans because it's like free money. If you're not, go to UVA.

I would take SLS. You want PNW (hard market) and PI (which SLS covers very nicely). UVA is fantastic but it's not much of a brand in the PNW, which is parochial and always a bit out of the loop (source: grew up in the PNW and knew enough lawyers there - it's a backwards place but it's beautiful)

IMO, UVA with zero debt sounds incredible, but given your goals I reckon SLS is defensible.

For PNW PI with LRAP, I would go with Stanford.