To transfer or not....

[vap]

If I were you, I'd still ask your current school for scholarship money.  You might also want to apply to transfer somewhere to have some "leverage" for scholarship money from your current school (assuming your current school cares at all about keeping its students--maybe they don't).

[jeff112]

Agreed with the "smart move" comment.  If you have no biglaw or academic aspirations, transferring isn't really worth it.  The only advantage I can think of is that the T10 schools generally have the best LRAPs, with a few exceptions.  I have no idea how those programs interact with the new Federal forgiveness programs, though...if they don't interact favorably, there would be absolutely no point in transferring.

[ToTransferOrNot]

You do realize that the best government work is just as difficult, if not more, to get than Biglaw, right?

And LRAP programs interact favorable with the federal forgiveness programs. They essentially stack on to one another, and many of the LRAP programs essentially mean that you would have minimal or no loan payments (the LRAP would cover the income-based payments until forgiveness kicked in at 10 years).

[big - fat - box]

Govt jobs are more difficult to get than most people think. Every agency that hires fresh grads gets inundated with apps for a very small amount of openings. This is even more true now that there are a ton of laid off refugees from biglaw. A lot of these refugees had high grades in law school or went to top schools, making the pool even more competitive. To make matters worse, a lot of fed agencies only hire experienced attorneys, i.e. you need at least 5 years of experience to be in the running at all. To give you an idea of how few slots there are, each year agencies like the EPA and GAO only hire about 10 students each. HUD hired a few more than that but I think the number was less than 20. Look at the Honors Program Handbook that Arizona Law puts out...your school should be able to hook you up with a copy or online access.