Ep 81: Finding Outside Scholarships for Law School
Law schools aren't the only places that award scholarships. As you navigate questions about how to pay for law school, don't forget about outside scholarships. Join Alice to talk about what these are and where to find them!
Episode Highlights
Gather Your Inventory
Think about what makes you, you? What have you been involved in? Think about your race, your heritage, your ethnicity, the organizations that you have been involved in, the extracurriculars that you did while you were in college, any volunteering work that you do at your job or in college, all of that stuff. Make a list.
Explore Scholarship Opportunities with Past Connections
Use your list for guidance. Look at every organization or volunteer activity that you've ever been involved. Somebody sponsored that. Most of those sponsorships have some type of foundation or some type of scholarship fund. Unfortunately, they aren't always super well publicized so look out for them! You want to lean on all of the connections that you have made.
Explore Scholarship Opportunities in Your Field of Interest
Start thinking about what it is you want to do after law school. Who you wanna work for? What organizations do you want to be supporting? Many legal aid organizations, sometimes even the state bar organizations, have money and they're willing to help you get to membership with them. Sometimes they're flat out scholarships.
State bar organizations have scholarships for those interested to work in public interest and volunteer organizations like AmeriCorps or Teach For America have educational awards.
Looking At Financially-Related Organizations for Higher Education
Find organizations that are dedicated in some kind of way to the financial health of law students or financial literacy, financial health in graduate and professional school students, or higher education generally. They will be a great resource for lists of scholarships available.
Tweetable Quotes
“Law School is expensive, but it doesn’t always have to be...there are plenty of places that are ready to help you defray the cost of your legal education, and most of the time don’t even look at your GPA and your LSAT.”