Financial Aid Resources

AccessLex is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting law students. Their tools are considered the “gold standard” for financial literacy in the legal community.

 

MAX Pre-Law Scholarship for incoming Fall 2026 students. Four students will receive $15,000 each.

MAX by AccessLex

MAX is a free personal finance program designed specifically for law students.

• Curriculum: Offers online lessons, webinars, and in-person workshops tailored to each year of law school (1L, 2L, 3L).
• Financial Coaching: Provides one-on-one access to Accredited Financial Counselors to help you build a personal budget or repayment strategy.

• Scholarship Incentives: By completing lessons, you earn entries into drawings for scholarships ranging from $5,000 to $25,000.

AccessLex Scholarship Databank

This is a curated database of over 800 vetted scholarship opportunities totaling more than $3 million in aid.

• Specific Filters: You can filter by background, area of interest, and state of residence.

• Vetted Leads: Unlike broad search engines, these are specific to law students and pre-law candidates, reducing the “noise” of irrelevant results.

AccessLex Private Loan Exchange

This is a nonprofit-curated directory designed to help law students compare and navigate private education loan options.

• Neutral Comparison Tool: A nonprofit-curated platform that allows law students to compare interest rates and repayment terms from multiple private and state-based lenders.

• Informed Borrowing: Designed to help students find supplemental financing options through a transparent, vetted directory.

Incoming 1Ls in 2026 (and returning students that have not previously borrowed federal loans) are subject to the newest federal borrowing limits and repayment plans.

With the sunset of Grad PLUS loans, private lending has become a more prominent fixture in law school 1L packages.

Preferred Lender List

The Cornell Law School financial aid office maintains a Preferred Lender List.

• Vetting: We selected these lenders based on “borrower-best” criteria, such as low interest rates, no origination fees, and ease of service.

• Transparency: By law, we must list at least three unaffiliated lenders and cannot receive any financial benefit from recommending them.

• Ease of Use: These lenders usually have streamlined systems that link directly with our financial aid portal for faster certification.

Neutral & Historical Lending List

Our institution maintains a Neutral Lending List to provide you with a broad starting point for your private loan research without endorsing any specific commercial entity. This list is a non-ranked compilation of private lenders that have provided loans to our law students over the past three to five years.

• No Endorsement: The inclusion of a lender on this list does not constitute a recommendation or a guarantee of the best rates.
• Objective Transparency: This list is designed to show you which banks are active in the law school space and have existing data-sharing links with our financial aid office, which can speed up the certification process.

Juno is not a lender; it is a collective bargaining group.

• The Model: Juno gathers thousands of students to create a “buying group.” They then take this group to various banks and lenders (like SoFi, Earnest, or Laurel Road) and ask them to bid for the group’s business.

• The Benefit: This competition often results in interest rates that are lower than what an individual could negotiate on their own.
• Flexibility: It is free to join, and there is no obligation to take the deal they negotiate.

Credible is an online loan marketplace that allows you to compare personalized loan offers from multiple lenders side-by-side using a single form.

• Single Application: Instead of applying to five different banks, you fill out one short form. Credible then pulls “pre-qualified” rates from its partner lenders (such as Sallie Mae, College Ave, and SoFi).
• Transparency: You can compare fixed vs. variable rates, total loan costs, and repayment terms (5 to 20 years) in one dashboard.