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ABA Law Student Division

Advocacy Efforts

Alliance for Legal Education

Dear Law Students and Friends:

As many of you are aware, the current credit crisis has made it significantly more difficult for graduating law students to obtain private loans to cover expenses related to bar exam preparation. Current federal guidelines permit only the fee for the bar exam itself to be covered by federally guaranteed student loans, forcing many students to rely on credit cards or to seek employment to cover the cost of bar review courses and living expenses.

The Alliance for Legal Education is a coalition of law schools and other organizations in the legal community working to ensure that students who have invested in a legal education have the funding they need to prepare for the bar exam. The Alliance has proposed a solution: allow costs associated with preparing for the bar to be included in the cost of attendance, which would, in turn, make these costs eligible for federal student loans. At the recent meeting of the ABA Law Student Division Board of Governors, division leadership voted to support this concept and to encourage law students nationwide to do the same.

To effect this policy change, and to do so in time to help this year's graduating law students, it is critical to contact legislators now to urge their support of this initiative. The Alliance has established a website where you can learn more about this initiative and use the online facility to contact your legislators about this issue.

Division Delegates to the ABA House of Delegates

Sam Arora

Sam Arora
Georgetown University Law Center
Washington, DC

 

 

Yasmin Gabriel

Yasmin J. Gabriel
Howard University School of Law
Washington, DC

 

Kerven Montfort

Kerven Montfort
Florida State University College of Law
Tallahassee, FL

 


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