Top Law Schools

I have been admitted to my target school and am slightly below 25% on GPA but several points above the LSAT 75th%. It is not my dream school but I am sort of bound by my location as I own a house and have kids and a job etc. I applied to another school with the exact same USNWR and generally same admission profile etc. just a different market. The other regional school offered $36k/year with a top 80% stip and the school I want to attend only offered $26k/year with a top 55% stip. Should I start negotiating now while there is still plenty of money to go around or later in the cycle once I have more offers from other schools and can potentially provide the target school with like 3-4 "better" offers and make them understand how non-competitive their offers are?

For reference, both schools are ranked in the mid 60s on USNWR. I will likely get into better schools (GW, Temple) but due to circumstances I am going to remain in my geo area unless I get into a T30 with significant $$ and no stip.

Any other tips on negotiation would be appreciated.

You can start negotiating now, but in addition to getting more money, you should absolutely be trying to get both schools to drop any stipulations. To get the latter goal, you may have to wait until you have admission to a better school (that doesn't use stipulations at all) to force their hand. But there's nothing stopping you from coming back to the negotiation table multiple times.

cavalier1138 wrote:You can start negotiating now, but in addition to getting more money, you should absolutely be trying to get both schools to drop any stipulations. To get the latter goal, you may have to wait until you have admission to a better school (that doesn't use stipulations at all) to force their hand. But there's nothing stopping you from coming back to the negotiation table multiple times.

I mostly agree, esp. with the advice to negotiate away stips. Top 55% isn't great, and would put OP at very real risk of losing their scholly just by performing around median (and as TLS' wisdom goes, one should always assume median - i.e., top 50% - performance in law school). Any stip at all isn't great, but at least top 80% sounds more reasonable than top 55%.

OP can absolutely negotiate more than once, but I'd caution against planning on negotiating more than two or at most three rounds, as people may become annoyed.