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Since I'm planning on starting law school in Fall 2012 I was planning a budget for myself so I could save up money for living expenses. Besides the obvious (tuition, books, apartment rent, food), what other sort of expenses should I be looking at? Can anyone give me an idea of what to expect for a monthly budget?

Also, any ideas on how you paid for your living expenses would be greatly appreciated! Did you mainly use money from loans? I read a lot suggesting for a 1L not to work to focus on getting high grades but I'm very hesitant as I'm worried how I'll get money for living expenses (unlike tuition which I plan to pay via scholarships (hopefully!) or loans (more likely)).

Thank you in advance for your help!

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Don't work during law school. You have one focus and that is to get as highly ranked in your class as you possibly can. In the end that will you get a better job with a better salary and offer you the ability to pay off the debt you have accumulated. Loans are how most people get by, but scholarships are always welcome. Your biggest expense will be tuition and that should be THE deciding factor in my opinion. Many law schools are pushing $40k plus living expenses. With out scholarship money, that can add up to over $60k/year in some markets. Its unrealistic for most people to think that they will have an easy time paying off close to $250k in law school education debt after interest is included. Keep in mind that thats not including what some people accumulate during their ungrad years as well.

So while living expenses like gas, cable, and clothing are somewhat important, they don't even make a dent in the overall tuition and housing costs. Those two should be your primary focus in the law school search.

mrtoren wrote:Many law schools are pushing $40k plus living expenses. With out scholarship money, that can add up to over $60k/year in some markets.

$60K, pffft. COA is well over $70K at some schools. ($77K this year at Northwestern, for example.)

It depends on a lot of factors, but plan on average to need about $60-65K/year.

op just save as much money as you can. youre going to need it. then whatever else you need you will take out loans for. its not that complicated, really. youll understand more when you see prices of everything from the schools and whatnot

Don't mean to hijack this thread (actually I do), but are you guys budgeting for 10 months or 1year. I'm budgeting for a year but I'm only calculating loans which are suppose to be for 10 months (not counting savings or summer jobs to have a worst case scenario plan). So my question is, how hard is it to find a paid internship during the summer (I'm pretty sure it varies from school to school) and assuming you get one, do you usually have enough time to get another job during the summer?