Following up on my previous post, Stanford Pilots New Income Share Financing Model For Legal Education, Press Release, Stanford Law Funds Innovative Legal Education Financing Model:
In furtherance of its comprehensive financial aid strategy, Stanford Law School (SLS) has announced that it will fund the third cohort of Flywheel Fellows, composed of ten SLS students from the class of 2026. The Flywheel Fund for Career Choice is a non-profit, pilot project created by alumni from Stanford Law School and Harvard Law School to encourage more graduates of leading law and professional schools to pursue public service careers by reducing the impact of law school debt on their career decisions.
SLS has collaborated with Flywheel since 2022, with Flywheel funding the first two cohorts of students in the program. Currently, 30 SLS students are enrolled in the program, spread across the ‘24, ‘25 and ‘26 classes. This is the first year SLS is funding a cohort of fellows, given the increasing interest from students and the promise of the pilot.
“Our financial support of the Flywheel Fellows underscores the law school’s longtime focus on finding new ways to put legal education within the financial reach of more students and to support our students’ public interest aspirations,” said SLS’s Robert Weisberg, interim dean and Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law. …
This new approach to funding higher education involves upfront investments in students, through Income Share Loans (ISLs), up to $170,000 for tuition and expenses per student.
Reuters, Stanford Law to Fund Student Loan Alternative Based on Grads’ Future Earnings:
Stanford Law School said this week that it will fund a student loan alternative that sets repayment at 10% of graduates’ income, whether they work in private practice, public interest or elsewhere.
The law school told Reuters on Wednesday that it is now providing the funding for the first “income share agreement” program offered at a U.S. law school, which it started last year with donations. The school is pumping $1.7 million into the loan alternative program called the Flywheel Fund for Career Choice.
Income share agreements differ from traditional student loans because participants receive tuition money upfront in exchange for paying back a portion of their future earnings. Stanford’s Flywheel fellows get up to $170,000 at the start of their legal studies while agreeing to pay back 10% of their income for 12 years after graduation.
The nonprofit Flywheel program began in 2022 with 20 participants, and this year expanded to include 10 first-year law students, with Stanford Law footing the bill. Although Flywheel administrators, who select the applicants, prioritize those who are likely to pursue lower-paying public interest jobs after they graduate, it also considers students going into the private sector. Notably, the program, unlike traditional loan forgiveness and repayment assistance programs, does not penalize graduates who later transition out of public interest work.
