Two updates:

University of South Carolina:

I applied back in November. I received a 35k~ per year scholarship. I asked them to increase this amount back in mid December. I was told they would get back to me later in the cycle. Towards the end of January I received an email asking me to reconfirm my interest in attending. I again asked for an increase in scholarship award and was again told it was too early. I respectfully withdrew my application. This may indicate that it is indeed to early to start negotiations with South Carolina (all schools are different, however) See email from South Carolina below:

Thank you for your inquiry about scholarships. At this point in time we have offered as much scholarship money as we can, until we start hearing from candidates and see how our scholarship budget stands. We have many admitted candidates who have received no offer at all from USC yet. Quite honestly, if additional funds do become available, we will have to decide to use it to make larger offers, or to help as many candidates as possible.>

University of Massacshusetts School of Law

I applied to this school back in November. My LSAT and GPA are well above their 75th percentile. I was accepted and received a full-tuition scholarship within weeks of applying. In mid- January I received an email from them saying to reach out if I felt their offer was not as competitive as one I've received from another school. See below for my reply to that email and the response I received.

Me:

Thank you for this email. I appreciate the generous scholarship already awarded to me. I am very interested in attending UMass Law, but I am not looking forward to the debt I will likely incur from three years of living expenses while at Umass Law. Paying tuition is no longer my concern as most schools in Massachusetts and others in New England have already offered me full-tuition scholarships. Are you able to offer me anything more than full-tuition? Something that would help defray some of the costs of my living expenses during my time in school?

Thank you for your consideration,>

UMass Law

I am so happy for you that your undergraduate efforts have led to several offers of "free" law school. Hard work paid-off.

Unfortunately there is nothing further we can do from an academic merit point-of-view in regards to additional scholarship. All I can say is that there are outside scholarships that may help. Some of the ones available are on our website. I'm sure a google search would find more.

I can say that our location is the best in Massachusetts. We are an hour from Boston and a half-hour from Providence RI and Cape Cod. Our cost of living is half-that of living in Boston. We are a small school with a great "brand-name" and our graduates have done well in passing the bar and getting jobs. If you are looking for a larger school, we are NOT what you are looking for.

With all this said, I think you would have an excellent experience and adventure coming to UMass Law.

Good luck with your decision, I know it is tough.