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Is there a general range you should have in your bank account before starting law school? Is it better to postpone applying and work for a year or two focussing on saving for LS?
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Is there a general range you should have in your bank account before starting law school? Is it better to postpone applying and work for a year or two focussing on saving for LS?
6 comments
Well you can count on COL being about $25k per year, could be less or more depending on what city you will be in. So if you don't want to take out loans for that, you should have $75k saved up.
Since that is obviously a massive amount - the real answer is: you should just save up as much as you can. Also bear in mind that most people have jobs for 1L summer that don't pay anything, so you will need to find a way to either stretch your loan money to last all 12 months instead of 9, or have a way to pay for living expenses then.
My personal situation is that I will have almost nothing in savings, and with a bit of consumer debt. Highly inadvisable, don't be like me! 😂 My dog was recently in the hospital which basically drained all of my savings, and I had to buy a new car, as my old one was just no longer reliable and needing constant maintenance. So, these were things that were not exactly planned for but... life happens. Haha.
Are you going to go to law school in the US or Canada?
Thank you for the replies! Currently I am in the middle of my LSAT studies (which I started a little more than a year ago) and hope to finish the test this summer or early fall. I worked full time for a while, but that didn't allow me to study enough, so I am now working part time (which doesn't allow me to save anything). I am aiming for a good LSAT score (170s) and hope to get a decent amount of scholarships. However, I would like to live comfortably while at LS (able to get an apartment that's next door to school/eat out occasionally/etc.) in order to maximise my performance, and I don't want to rely on scholarships or loans for that as I'm not sure how much I would receive. I am slowly doing research into scholarships/loans for LS, but my LSAT studies take up most of my time and I'm just feeling out the subject right now.
Depends on your situation. Are you going in with scholarships? Taking a year or two off to get the highest LSAT you can could be worth a lot. Are you living at home? If you have a full ride and are, say, living with family, then your needs would pale in comparison to someone with loans and living expenses. You might want to save more in that situation.
This advice is ultimately meaningless as I have no idea of your specific situation, but: I would say at least as much as you need to live on for a couple of years, and maybe your law school books. Not everyone does or can do this, so there's not really a set metric for it.
For me, budgeting in general for academics is to x2 the cost of schooling. So how much money you should have in your bank will depend on your scholarship, loan, and other cash sources.