In 2019, three of the nation’s more prestigious law schools — including Columbia University — set something of a milestone. Their annual costs eclipsed $100,000 for the first time.
That made a bit of news, given the nice round — and quite sizeable — figure.
Costs have continued to escalate since then, with Columbia Law School topping $110,000 for this new academic year. The figure includes tuition, fees, cost of living, books and supplies, health coverage and personal expenses.
Derek Muller, a professor at The University of Iowa College of Law, recently tweeted an attachment of Columbia’s list of expenses, noting: “Looks like Columbia is the first law school to cross the $110,000 mark for academic year tuition ($75,572), fees, & living expenses.”
Muller pulled the expenses directly from each school’s website.
Another New York school, New York University School of Law, came in second at $109,000, he noted. Harvard Law School was third, at $107,000. The University of Chicago also earned a mention by Muller, who tweeted that that school’s cost was now $106,000.
Muller’s tweets got some people fired up: “This makes me sad & angry. When I graduated UCLA law in 2003, tuition was 11,000 a YEAR in the state. With living expenses in LA, it rounded out to about 28K a year. It’s now 54K in state and 64K out of state b4 living expenses. It’s outrageous. And that’s a public state school.”
That tweet was written by Erika Wilson, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law. The cost of going there is $50,094 for North Carolina residents. A bargain, it would seem …
One person on the Twitter thread broke down the cost at Columbia this way: “Assume 12 credit hours, 1.5hr/class/wk, 14 wk semesters, 110000/84 = $1310/hr of instruction.”
Of course, the $110,000 cost includes living and personal expenses. Law schools provide the cost of attendance data because it is used to determine eligibility for financial aid. The ABA tracks similar data, but without personal expenses.
Last year, ABA data showed that five law schools exceeded $100,000 in tuition, fees and living expenses.
Columbia, University of Chicago, NYU, Harvard University and Stanford University all exceeded $100,000. Stanford was the most expensive, largely due to the fact that its living expenses were the highest at $40,659 a year for on-campus.
According to ABA data, the median law school logged $66,739 in tuition, fees and living expenses, and 41 law schools had expenses below $50,000 a year.
Columbia ranked fourth in last year’s tally of tuition, fees and living expenses. While the cost seems steep, no school sends more graduates to Big Law firms than Columbia. According to ABA employment statistics, 300 of the 460 Columbia Law 2021 grads got jobs in firms with 501+ attorneys.
They are not just good jobs; they are very good jobs. First-year associate pay continues to climb and is now at $215,000, according to Biglaw Investor. An annual $20,000 bonus bumps it even more.
So, arguably, Columbia’s price tag is worth it, if you can land such a gig. Muller told Reuters that the rise in associate salary is likely related to the rising cost of legal education at such prized law schools. Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.
Columbia doesn’t appear to price anyone out. For the Class of 2021, it got 9,645 applicants. Only 11.3 % made the cut.
And it does give financial help, as well. Indeed, the school’s 1,263 students all receive some form of grant, according to the ABA. Only 217 of those, however, get at half-to-tuition. Many still pay a lot.
