Regent Law tied for 94th nationally in the 2025 U.S. News & World Report rankings — its highest placement to date — after climbing 53 spots over four years, which the school's own reporting describes as the fastest improvement among ABA-accredited law schools in that span. For the 2026-27 cycle, Regent has moved further still, to 91st, extending the upward trajectory rather than plateauing after the initial jump.
The rise did not happen on ranking metrics alone; it tracks alongside a cluster of outcomes Regent highlights together in its own materials. The school reports a 93 percent employment rate in full-credit ABA-defined positions within ten months of graduation, and it describes its first-time bar passage performance as ranking in the top 40 nationally. Regent's Center for Advocacy — which trains students in negotiation, trial advocacy, and alternative dispute resolution — has produced more than 90 national and regional championships, and the school's moot court program was ranked fifth nationally by the University of Houston Law Center in 2016. Regent teams have also reached the global top 16 of the Price Media Law Moot Court Programme at Oxford and won that competition's Americas Regional Championship. None of this guarantees continued ranking movement, but it shows the improvement is backed by measurable programmatic strength rather than a single metric spike.
Regent was founded in 1986 and earned ABA accreditation in 1996 — a relatively young law school by national standards, which makes a jump into the low-to-mid 90s notable regardless of methodology quirks in any single year's rankings. Applicants should treat the ranking trend itself as directional information: a school with real, improving fundamentals, not a static, long-settled brand.
Regent describes its Law Review scholarship as approached 'from the perspective of a historic Christian worldview grounded in a Higher Law understood as the Law of God.' That framing is not incidental branding — it signals that legal analysis at Regent is explicitly situated within a faith tradition rather than treated as worldview-neutral, which is a meaningful distinction from most ABA-accredited law schools and something prospective students should weigh directly rather than assume.
The faculty roster reflects that identity in practice. Regent lists John D. Ashcroft, Erin Hawley, and James Joseph Duane among its faculty. The school's list of notable faculty also includes Samuel Alito; given the seniority and public role that name implies, applicants should independently verify the current nature of any such faculty affiliation before treating it as a reason to enroll, since faculty rosters and visiting appointments change year to year.
Regent's alumni network carries the same throughline into legal practice: Kristen Waggoner (JD 1997); Bob McDonnell (JD 1989); Daniel Kelly (JD 1991); and Monica Goodling (JD 1999). These names illustrate that a Regent JD has been a credible launching point into public office, appellate advocacy, and constitutional litigation specifically — not just legal practice generally.
The curriculum's international and doctrinal offerings extend the same mission. Beyond the J.D., Regent offers an LL.M. in Human Rights and an LL.M. in Foundations of American Law, alongside an LL.M. in American Legal Studies, and it partners with Handong International Law School (HILS) in South Korea to grant LL.M. degrees to HILS graduates and current students. Together with the Regent University Law Review's stated Higher Law framing and its companion journal, Pro Tempore, this positions Regent as a law school built for students who want their legal education explicitly integrated with a Christian intellectual and vocational framework, rather than one where faith is an extracurricular add-on to a conventional curriculum.
For an applicant, the practical takeaway is this: Regent's ranking momentum is real and documented, and its Christian-worldview identity is not a marketing layer but something built into how the Law Review frames scholarship, who teaches in the classroom, and which international partnerships the school pursues. Anyone evaluating Regent should decide, going in, whether that integration of faith and law is the environment they want their legal education built around — because at Regent, it is the organizing premise, not a footnote.
Yes — the bar passage gap is real and well-documented, and it's arguably the single strongest outcome number in Regent's file. Regent's first-time bar passage rate is reported at 91.26 percent against a state average of 81.62 percent, a margin of roughly 9.6 percentage points in the school's favor. Looked at over a longer horizon, the ultimate bar passage rate — the share of a graduating class that passes within two years — reaches 94.62 percent, meaning the small minority who don't clear the bar on the first attempt overwhelmingly do so on a later one.
Regent's own disclosures also include a separate data point tied specifically to 2024: an overall first-time passage rate of 88.18 percent that year against an average of 77.60 percent across all ABA-accredited schools nationally — a different comparison group (national ABA average rather than state average) and, it appears, a different testing cohort than the 91.26/81.62 figures. Both data points point the same direction — Regent grads clear the bar at a rate meaningfully above whatever benchmark is used — but applicants should treat the exact percentage as somewhat cycle-dependent rather than a single fixed number, since bar-passage disclosures are reported year over year and can shift with each cohort. Regent describes its recent first-time performance as ranking in the top 40 nationally, which is consistent with either data point being a genuine outlier on the strong side rather than a rounding artifact.
A school's ranking position and its bar passage rate don't always move together, but at Regent the two data points reinforce a consistent picture: strong first-time bar performance, a 93 percent employment rate in full-credit ABA-reported positions within ten months of graduation, and 96.1 percent of the class landing in jobs requiring bar passage or JD-advantage roles. Regent's Center for Advocacy and its heavy simulation-course enrollment — 305 filled seats in simulation courses and 136 filled field placements in a class of roughly 127 — suggest that practical, exam-adjacent skill-building is baked into the curriculum rather than left to a stand-alone bar-prep add-on in the final semester.
Geography likely plays a role too: Regent's own reporting identifies Virginia as its largest employment destination for graduates, which means a large share of the class is training for, sitting, and passing the same state bar the school's location and curriculum are built around — a tighter feedback loop than a school whose graduates scatter across many jurisdictions.
A strong bar passage rate is a floor, not a ceiling, and it should not be read as a proxy for elite-firm placement. Of Regent's reported employment outcomes, only 1 graduate — about 1 percent of the class — went to a firm of 501 or more attorneys, the 'Big Law' category associated with the roughly $215,000 first-year salary tier nationally. The bulk of Regent's employed graduates land in much smaller settings: 31 in firms of 1-10 attorneys, a handful more in the 11-25 and 26-50 ranges, and none reported in the 51-500 attorney bands. Government work absorbs a meaningful share of the class — 22.3 percent — while judicial clerkships add a separate 20 state/local and 6 federal placements, and public-interest placements are a small slice at 2.9 percent.
Put plainly: Regent's graduates are unusually likely to pass the bar on the first try and unusually likely to be working in a bar-required or JD-advantage job ten months out, but they are not, on the evidence in Regent's own disclosures, heading into Big Law in meaningful numbers. For an applicant whose goal is passing the bar reliably and practicing law — especially in Virginia, in government, in small or mid-size firms, or via clerkship — the bar passage numbers are a legitimate and rare strength to weigh heavily. For an applicant whose primary goal is a large law firm salary track, the bar passage rate, however strong, is not the number that answers that question — the firm-size distribution is.
A Regent JD reliably leads to a job — 96.1% of the 103 graduates in the reporting class were employed in full-time, long-term positions where bar passage was required or a JD provided a real advantage within ten months of graduation. That headline number is genuinely strong. But the more useful question for an applicant is not whether Regent graduates get jobs — they largely do — it's what those jobs actually look like, and there the picture is specific and worth understanding before you enroll.
Start with the private-sector split. Of the graduates who went into law firms, exactly one landed at a firm of 501 or more attorneys — the "Big Law" tier that anchors the $215,000-salary end of the profession's bimodal pay curve. That's about 1% of the class. Nobody landed in the 101-250 or 251-500 attorney bands at all. The overwhelming majority of firm placements were small: 31 graduates went to firms of 1-10 attorneys, 2 hung out solo shingles, 4 landed at 11-25-attorney firms, and 5 went to 26-50-attorney firms. In other words, if you go to Regent and end up in private practice, the realistic expectation is a small or mid-size firm, not a national or international one. That matters financially — small-firm starting salaries cluster well below the Big Law peak — and it matters practically, because small-firm associates typically get client contact and courtroom time far sooner than their large-firm peers.
Government work is the school's second-biggest track and arguably its real strength: 23 graduates, or 22.3% of the class, went into government positions — a substantial share for a school this size. Judicial clerkships add another important thread: 6 graduates clerked at the federal level and 20 more at the state or local level, for 26 clerkships total out of 103 graduates. That's a meaningfully deep clerkship pipeline relative to class size, and it's consistent with a school that has invested in advocacy and litigation training (see below). Public interest placement is modest at 3 graduates (2.9%), and business/industry accounts for another 4.
Geography is the other half of the story the topline employment rate doesn't tell you. Regent's data identifies Virginia as its single largest employment destination — unsurprising for a Virginia Beach-based school, but important for planning purposes. If your goal is to practice in Virginia, particularly in government, small-firm, or clerkship-track roles, Regent's placement pattern lines up closely with local outcomes. If your goal is a national Big Law career, the data says that's a one-graduate-a-year outcome here, not a program strength, and you should weigh that against schools whose placement data shows deeper large-firm pipelines.
On bar passage, Regent reports a first-time pass rate of 91.26% against a state average of 81.62% for the same cycle — meaningfully above the jurisdiction benchmark — and an ultimate pass rate of 94.62% within two years for the relevant graduating class. A strong bar-passage rate matters directly to the employment numbers above, since nearly all of those bar-required jobs depend on clearing that hurdle on a reasonable timeline, and Regent's rate suggests its bar-prep curriculum and student body are executing well on that front.
Put together, the honest read is this: a Regent JD is a dependable ticket into practicing law, especially in Virginia, especially in government service, small-firm litigation, or a clerkship — and it is not, in any realistic sense, a Big Law pipeline. Anyone choosing Regent because they're chasing a large-firm salary should recalibrate that expectation against these numbers before enrolling; anyone whose goal is government service, a courtroom-focused small-firm practice, or a clerkship in Virginia or elsewhere will find data here that supports that path directly.
Yes, on the record Regent has built — its Center for Advocacy has produced over 90 national and regional championships in trial advocacy, negotiation, and alternative dispute resolution, and its moot court program has posted results that stand out nationally and internationally. For an applicant weighing whether a smaller, regionally focused law school can still deliver serious litigation training, this is the strongest concrete evidence in Regent's favor.
The headline results are specific rather than vague. Regent's team competing in the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition was ranked fifth nationally by the University of Houston Law Center in 2016. On the international side, a Regent team reached the global top 16 of the Price Media Law Moot Court Programme at Oxford University in 2017 and won that competition's Americas Regional Championship in 2016. Those are notable, verifiable results, though applicants should note they reflect specific competition years rather than an ongoing annual ranking — worth asking current students or admissions how recent teams have performed before treating those results as a guarantee of present-day strength.
Beyond competition trophies, the practical training infrastructure is substantial relative to the school's size. Regent's curriculum runs 305 filled seats in simulation courses — the courtroom-style, skills-based classes (trial practice, negotiation, drafting) that let students rehearse lawyering before they do it for a client. Field placements filled another 136 seats, putting students into real legal offices and courts for supervised practical experience, and the school lists 87 available clinic slots with 19 filled, giving a smaller but real hands-on caseload option. Together with five co-curricular offerings, this is a curriculum that visibly prioritizes doing law over only reading about it.
This emphasis lines up with where Regent's graduates actually end up. As covered elsewhere in this guide, the class's placement pattern leans heavily toward small and mid-size firms, government positions, and a meaningful clerkship pipeline — 6 federal and 20 state/local clerkships in one recent class — rather than large-firm associate tracks. Those are exactly the settings where trial-ready skills, courtroom comfort, and negotiation reps translate into faster responsibility: small-firm associates and government attorneys are typically in court, or at least in front of clients and opposing counsel, far sooner than their counterparts starting at large firms. A moot-court pedigree and heavy simulation-course load are a more direct résumé asset for that kind of career than for a large-firm litigation-department track, where junior associates often spend years on document review before seeing a courtroom.
Regent also publishes two journals — the Regent University Law Review and Pro Tempore — giving students a scholarly-writing credential to pair with the advocacy-side skills training, and its faculty roster includes James Joseph Duane, which reinforces the school's litigation-and-advocacy identity at the classroom level as well as the competition level.
The fair caveat: none of this is unique to Regent in kind — most law schools run moot court and trial advocacy programs — but the scale of Regent's competition record (90-plus championships) and the volume of simulation and field-placement seats relative to its size suggest the school has put real institutional weight behind advocacy training rather than treating it as a co-curricular afterthought. For an applicant aiming at litigation, prosecution, public defense, or any Virginia-market small-firm practice, that emphasis is a legitimate, documented differentiator worth weighing alongside the school's overall cost and outcomes.
Regent's name network points toward a specific kind of legal career — conservative legal advocacy, public office, and government service — more than it points toward corporate law firms. That pattern shows up both in who has taught at Regent and in what its graduates have gone on to do.
On the faculty side, Regent's affiliated names include John D. Ashcroft, Erin Hawley, James Joseph Duane, and Samuel Alito. Having sitting or former high-office figures connected to the law school is unusual for a school of Regent's size and signals genuine access to conservative legal and judicial circles, though prospective students should understand this in terms of visibility and network rather than guaranteed mentorship or classroom access.
The alumni list tells a similar story. Kristen Waggoner (JD 1997) is among Regent's notable alumni. Bob McDonnell (JD 1989) is among Regent's notable alumni. Monica Goodling (JD 1999) is among Regent's notable alumni. Daniel Kelly (JD 1991) is among Regent's notable alumni. Together, these names describe a pipeline into public office, DOJ-adjacent government work, and conservative public-interest litigation rather than a pipeline into large law firms — a pattern consistent with Regent's own employment data, where government positions account for roughly 22% of the graduating class and only a single graduate landed at a firm of 501-plus attorneys.
Regent backs this identity with an explicit institutional mission: the Regent University Law Review states that it presents scholarship from a historic Christian worldview grounded in what the school calls a Higher Law, or the Law of God. A second student publication, Pro Tempore, adds a further outlet for student writing. For an applicant weighing Regent against a secular peer school, this is a genuine point of differentiation, not a marketing gloss — it shapes the scholarly and extracurricular culture a student will actually experience for three years.
Regent also invests visibly in advocacy skills training through its Center for Advocacy, which teaches negotiation, trial advocacy, and alternative dispute resolution and has amassed more than 90 national and regional competition championships. Its moot court program has been ranked as high as fifth nationally by the University of Houston Law Center, and Regent teams have reached the global top 16 and won the Americas Regional Championship at the Price Media Law Moot Court Programme at Oxford. For applicants who intend to litigate — whether in government, public-interest, or Christian legal advocacy settings — that competitive record is a more relevant signal than a glossy brand name, since it reflects sustained, hands-on training rather than name recognition alone.
Taken together, Regent's network is not built for someone chasing a Big Law offer; the school's own outcomes data confirms that path is rare here. It is built for someone aiming at government service, judicial clerkships (Regent placed graduates into both federal and state/local clerkships), public-office campaigns, or advocacy organizations aligned with a conservative Christian legal philosophy. Applicants should weigh the network against their own career goals rather than against national prestige rankings alone.
Regent offers three LL.M. programs alongside its J.D.: an LL.M. in American Legal Studies, an LL.M. in Human Rights, and an LL.M. in Foundations of American Law. These tracks are aimed primarily at internationally trained lawyers seeking grounding in U.S. legal doctrine or a human-rights-focused credential, rather than at domestic J.D. graduates looking to specialize further.
Regent's most distinctive international tie is its partnership with Handong International Law School (HILS) in South Korea, through which HILS graduates and current students can pursue Regent LL.M. degrees. This connects Regent to an international legal education institution abroad and gives the school a small but real international enrollment pipeline that a purely domestic law school would lack.
For a prospective J.D. applicant, the direct relevance is limited: these are separate degree tracks, not concentrations layered onto the J.D. curriculum, and the data pack does not detail cross-enrollment or joint coursework between J.D. and LL.M. students. What the LL.M. offerings and the Handong tie do signal is Regent's broader ambition to export its Christian-worldview approach to legal education internationally, reinforcing the identity described elsewhere in this guide rather than adding a new J.D.-facing feature.
A 158 LSAT sits exactly at Regent's reported median, meaning half of admitted students score above it and half below — treat it as a planning anchor, not a predictor of your own outcome. Regent's most recently reported entering class shows an LSAT range of 153 at the 25th percentile, 158 at the median, and 161 at the 75th percentile, alongside a GPA range of 3.37 to 3.68 to 3.89. The school received 537 applications and extended 238 offers, for a reported acceptance rate of about 44%. That figure describes the applicant pool as a whole, not any individual's chances — general admissions-outcome patterns (like those covered at /law-school-application-timeline) matter more for your own file than a school-wide rate.
Where your own numbers land relative to these bands matters most for how Regent is likely to price your legal education, not for whether you'll be admitted. Regent reports that 97% of its students receive some form of grant, with a median first-year grant of $22,500. Of students receiving aid, about 45% get scholarships covering less than half of tuition, while 51% fall into a band covering half to (but not all of) tuition; no students in the reported cohort received a full-tuition award. In practical terms, a file that lands at or above Regent's 75th percentile LSAT of 161, especially paired with a GPA near or above 3.89, is the kind of file schools typically use to justify their largest discretionary grants — worth testing during scholarship negotiation (see /law-school-scholarship-negotiation) once offers are in hand, since schools often have room to move for applicants who exceed their medians.
The LSAT itself is worth planning around deliberately. Since the August 2024 format change, the test consists of two scored Logical Reasoning sections, one scored Reading Comprehension section, and an unscored variable section — Logic Games are gone, and Argumentative Writing is now a separate, unscored, online-proctored writing sample submitted apart from the multiple-choice test. Because law schools consider an applicant's highest score, and because Regent's 25th-to-75th percentile LSAT band spans 153 to 161 — a meaningful eight-point range — a disciplined, months-long prep cycle using official practice material (detailed at /how-to-study-for-the-lsat) can plausibly move an applicant from below Regent's median into scholarship-relevant territory above it.
Cost planning should factor in more than the sticker price of tuition. Regent's data pack lists an estimated off-campus living cost of $32,268 for students not living with family, a figure that compounds with tuition and fees when estimating total borrowing needs. As of the 2025-26 cycle, federal Direct Unsubsidized loans are capped at $50,000 per year and $200,000 in aggregate, and Grad PLUS loans have been eliminated for new borrowers — so applicants weighing a Regent offer against the median grant figures above should model their full three-year cost, not just tuition, and verify current federal loan terms before enrolling (see /law-school-loans-and-pslf and /is-law-school-worth-it for the underlying mechanics).
Nearly every Regent Law student — 97% of the J.D. class — receives some form of grant, and the median grant among full-time students is $22,500 a year. That single fact should reframe how you read Regent's sticker price: almost nobody pays full tuition, but the size of your personal discount varies a lot, and the published data pack for this school does not include a current, reliable tuition or full cost-of-attendance figure, so treat any number you see elsewhere as something to verify directly with the admissions and financial aid office before you rely on it.
What the data does show is the shape of the aid: 45% of grant recipients get an award covering less than half of tuition, while 51% get an award covering somewhere between half and full tuition. No students in the reported cohort received a full-tuition scholarship. In practice, that means the realistic range of outcomes at Regent runs from a modest discount to a substantial one — likely well over half your tuition bill — but a completely free ride is not, based on this data, part of the school's current aid picture. If you're negotiating an offer, understanding where the half-tuition line sits is the single most useful number to anchor to; see the general playbook at /law-school-scholarship-negotiation for how to use a competing offer or a strong LSAT number to push a package upward.
Grants are only half the financing picture — the other half is what you borrow to cover tuition plus living costs. Regent's own estimate for off-campus living expenses is $32,268 a year, which gives you a sense of the non-tuition floor almost every student is financing somehow, whether through savings, work, or loans. As of the 2025-26 cycle (verify current figures before you borrow), federal Grad PLUS loans are being eliminated for new borrowers effective July 2026, and law students will instead rely on the Direct Unsubsidized Loan, capped at $50,000 per year and $200,000 in aggregate, inside an overall $257,500 lifetime federal cap. If your grant covers, say, half of tuition and you add Regent's own living-cost estimate on top, most admitted students should be able to stay within the federal annual cap — but anyone with a smaller award, dependents, or a higher personal budget should model the gap now, because Grad PLUS is no longer there to absorb it, and the private loan market that fills that gap generally carries less favorable terms and fewer protections.
On repayment, new federal borrowers will choose between a Tiered Standard Plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), an income-driven option running roughly 1-10% of adjusted gross income. The Standard Plan is the default and earns zero credit toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness, so if you enter Regent expecting to work toward PSLF — relevant for graduates headed into government or nonprofit work, which the pack shows is a meaningful share of Regent's outcomes — you have to affirmatively enroll in RAP rather than assume forgiveness happens automatically. For the mechanics of PSLF eligibility and the ten-year qualifying-payment clock, see /law-school-loans-and-pslf.
The bottom line for Regent specifically: a near-universal grant rate and a $22,500 median award mean most admitted students are not paying list price, but the absence of a published tuition figure in current compilations and the absence of any full-ride awards mean you should request a written net-price estimate before committing, factor in the $32,268 living estimate as a real annual cost, and build your borrowing plan around the post-2026 federal caps rather than assuming a loan will simply cover whatever the gap turns out to be.
Yes, for the right applicant — but the case for Regent has almost nothing to do with Big Law and everything to do with whether its mission, bar-passage record, and small-firm/government/clerkship placement pattern match what you actually want to do with a law degree. Of the 103 graduates in the reporting class, only one landed at a firm of 501-plus attorneys, so if a six-figure Big Law offer is the metric you're optimizing for, look at outcome data from schools whose employment reports show a large cluster in that category — the national market is genuinely bimodal, with a large peak near $215,000 at the biggest firms and a much larger cluster of jobs well below that, and Regent's own numbers place it firmly in the second group. That's not a knock; it's a data point that should shape your decision rather than surprise you after graduation.
What the placement data actually shows. Regent reports that 96.1% of graduates land in full-time, long-term jobs that are bar-required or J.D.-advantage within ten months — a strong overall placement rate by any measure. The distribution behind that number is heavily weighted toward small and mid-size practice: 31 graduates went to firms of 1-10 attorneys, another 9 to firms in the 11-50 range, and essentially none to the 51-500 attorney tier. Government work absorbed 22.3% of the class, and clerkships were meaningful too — 20 state/local clerkships and 6 federal clerkships out of 103 graduates, a notable showing for a school of this size. Public interest placement was smaller, at 2.9%. Put together, this is a profile built around solo/small-firm practice, government service, and clerking, with Virginia listed as the largest single employment destination — consistent with a regionally rooted, public-sector-and-small-practice pipeline rather than a national Big Law feeder.
Bar passage is where Regent's numbers do the most talking. First-time bar passage for Regent's cohort was 91.26%, against a state average of 81.62% — a real, double-digit gap in the school's favor rather than a rounding difference. The ultimate pass rate within two years climbs to 94.62%. For an applicant who is not gambling on a Big Law outcome, this is arguably the more decision-relevant statistic: it tells you that students who complete the program and sit for the bar are passing it at a rate well above their state's field, which matters more to your actual career than a ranking number. Regent's U.S. News position — tied for 94th in the 2025 cycle, rising 53 places over four years, which the school describes as the fastest improvement among accredited law schools in that span — is a trajectory signal worth noting, but a rising rank is a momentum indicator, not a guarantee of future outcomes, so weigh it alongside the harder placement and bar numbers rather than in place of them.
Mission fit is not a soft factor here — it's structural. Regent was founded in 1986 and accredited by the ABA in 1996, and it explicitly organizes its academic identity around a Christian worldview; its law review states that it presents legal scholarship grounded in what it calls a "Higher Law" tradition. That is a genuine differentiator, not marketing language layered onto a generic curriculum: faculty affiliated with the school include John Ashcroft, Erin Hawley, James Duane, and Samuel Alito, and notable alumni include Kristen Waggoner, alongside Bob McDonnell, Daniel Kelly, and Monica Goodling. If your professional goals involve religious-liberty law, government service, judicial clerking, or advocacy work aligned with a faith-based legal tradition, this network and curricular identity is a tangible asset that a secular, rankings-focused school cannot replicate. If your goals are agnostic to that framework, or actively misaligned with it, the mission becomes a cost rather than a benefit, because it shapes classroom discussion, journal content, and the alumni network you'll be tapping for the rest of your career.
Advocacy training is Regent's other clear strength. The school's Center for Advocacy has produced more than 90 national and regional championships, and its moot court program has been ranked among the top programs nationally and has reached elite international rounds, including the global top 16 at Oxford's Price Media Law Moot Court competition. For an applicant aiming at trial work, appellate advocacy, or a state or federal clerkship — the kind of role 20-plus of Regent's own graduates land every year — this is a concrete, resume-relevant strength, not a vague claim of "practical training."
A simple framework. Ask yourself three questions. First, does your target career path look like Regent's actual outcome distribution — small firm, government, clerkship, or Virginia-based practice — rather than a national Big Law track? Second, do you want or at least not mind training inside an explicitly Christian legal-education mission, with the faculty, journal, and alumni network that come with it? Third, given the financing realities covered above — a 97% grant rate but no full-ride awards, and federal loan caps that no longer stretch to cover unlimited cost — does the net price after your grant make sense against the salary range typical of small-firm and government law rather than Big Law? If you answer yes to the first two and the math in the third pencils out, Regent's above-average bar passage and rising trajectory make it a reasonable, defensible choice. If any of the three is a hard no, the mismatch will likely cost you more than tuition. For a broader, non-school-specific version of this cost-benefit exercise, see /is-law-school-worth-it.