keeping up with harvard

[abony holmes]

Harvard Law School has announced that it will pay 3L tuition for all future students who commit to work in public service for five years.  Over at Nuts and Boalts, bloggers are wondering what effect this announcement will have on Berkeley Law’s ability to recruit and retain public interest students. Since tuition at Berkeley is rising substantially, this announcement may mean it will be cheaper for Harvard law students to go into public interest than for Berkeley Law students. Of course, this argument assumes that Berkeley Law public interest students make the choice between Harvard and Berkeley.

My thoughts: with the imminent expansion of Berkeley’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program, and the increase in tuition, Dean Edley will find ways to keep Berkeley’s public interest edge among the top law schools in the country. Either way, I’m hoping more law schools follow this public interest trend. It will only benefit students and the legal profession to have law schools competing to find ways to finance the education of future public interest attorneys.