Tennessee Law's sticker tuition for full-time students is $16,696 a year, with an additional $3,866 in fees — a base cost of attendance that sits well below what most private law schools charge before any scholarship money changes hands. Add the school's estimated off-campus living costs of $26,216, and the total estimated cost of attendance comes to $46,778 for the year. That figure is a planning anchor, not a guarantee: it reflects the school's own budget estimate for a single student, and your actual costs will move with your housing choices and personal spending.
What that low base tuition buys is a structural advantage that follows you well past graduation: less principal to borrow, less interest to accrue, and more flexibility in the jobs you can afford to take. That matters given how the school's graduates actually enter the market. Of the 124 graduates in the reporting class, 91.1% landed in jobs requiring bar passage or where a JD provided a clear advantage — a strong outcome for a public law school with in-state pricing. Only 9.7% went to the largest firms (501+ attorneys), the segment associated with the highest reported entry-level salaries nationally; the bulk of the class distributed across smaller firms (29 graduates went to firms of 1-10 attorneys alone), government (8.9%), business and industry (10 graduates), and public interest (6.5%). Fourteen graduates secured clerkships — 6 federal, 8 state or local.
That employment mix is the real argument for Tennessee's low cost: if most of your graduating class is not headed to a $215,000 Big Law salary, then how much you borrowed to get there determines whether the law degree pays off in the years immediately after graduation. A graduate entering a government, smaller-firm, or public-interest role with $46,778 a year in total costs is in a fundamentally different financial position than a similarly employed graduate who paid double or triple that at a private school with sticker pricing.
On top of the low base cost, Tennessee layers meaningful need- and merit-based aid: 89% of students receive some grant funding, with a median grant among full-time recipients of $10,550. Combined with tuition, that median grant meaningfully reduces the effective price for the large majority of the class. The distribution of grant sizes, though, tells you not to expect full-ride outcomes as the norm: 67% of students who receive aid get awards covering less than half of tuition, another 18% get awards between half and full tuition, and the pack reports 0% of students receiving a full-tuition award. In practice, that means most admitted students should plan around a partial grant that lowers, but does not eliminate, the already-modest sticker price — and should treat any bigger offer as an outlier worth negotiating around, not an expectation.
The bar outcomes reinforce that a modest price tag hasn't come at the cost of exam readiness: Tennessee's first-time bar pass rate was 85.6%, compared to a state average of 80.01% in the same reporting period, and the ultimate pass rate over two attempts climbed to 89.66%. For a prospective student weighing cost against risk, that combination — sub-$17,000 tuition, a below-$47,000 total cost estimate, majority grant participation, and a bar pass rate that clears the state average by more than five points — is the core of Tennessee's value proposition. It is not a school promising Big Law outcomes for everyone; it is a school where the economics work even if you land in the public sector or a small or mid-size firm, which is where most of its graduates actually go.
Tennessee Law's most recent entering class of 140 students was drawn from 2,176 applications and 539 offers, a 24.77% acceptance rate. That rate, on its own, describes selectivity across the whole applicant pool — it does not predict any individual applicant's outcome, and Tennessee does not publish (nor should any applicant assume) an admissions formula tied to specific numbers.
What the pack does support is where your numbers sit relative to the enrolled class. Tennessee's LSAT range runs 160 at the 25th percentile, 164 at the median, and 166 at the 75th percentile. A 164 places you at the middle of the class on that measure alone; a 166 puts you in the top quarter; a 160 sits at the bottom quarter of enrolled LSAT scores. The GPA range follows a similar shape: 3.67 at the 25th percentile, 3.89 at the median, and 3.95 at the 75th percentile — a tight band that signals the enrolled class is academically consistent, with less spread in GPA than you might expect from the LSAT range.
Because both bands are relatively narrow at the top (166 to 3.95 isn't a huge stretch above median), an applicant whose LSAT and GPA both land above the 75th percentile marks is presenting a file that's strong on paper relative to the class Tennessee actually enrolled — useful context if you're deciding whether it's worth another testing cycle to move your score, or how to think about competing offers elsewhere. Conversely, a file below the 25th percentile on both measures is meaningfully off the profile of most of the 140 students who enrolled, though the pack doesn't tell us how splitters (strong on one measure, weaker on the other) fared, and file-specific factors like work experience, writing, and letters aren't captured in these medians at all.
The practical use of these numbers is scholarship planning as much as admissions strategy. With 89% of students receiving some grant aid but only a minority receiving awards above half tuition, where your LSAT and GPA land relative to the 25th/50th/75th benchmarks is the single biggest lever you control heading into negotiation — a score at or above the 75th percentile (166 LSAT / 3.95 GPA) is the kind of file schools use merit dollars to compete for, while a file near the median is competing within the largest cohort of the class. If you're weighing whether to retake the LSAT before applying, the shared LSAT prep guide (/how-to-study-for-the-lsat) walks through how score movement typically happens; if you already have offers in hand, /law-school-scholarship-negotiation covers how applicants use median and 75th-percentile positioning to ask for more aid. For the mechanics of assembling and timing your application itself, see /law-school-application-timeline.
Yes — Tennessee Law's first-time bar passage rate sits meaningfully above the state average, and the gap holds up over time. Graduates posted an 85.6% first-time pass rate, compared with a Tennessee state average of 80.01% for the same administration — a spread of roughly 5.6 percentage points in the school's favor.
That first-time number isn't the whole story, either. Looking at the two-year ultimate pass rate (which captures graduates who needed a second attempt), Tennessee Law reaches 89.66%, meaning the large majority of any given class is licensed within two sittings of the exam. For an applicant trying to gauge risk, the practical read is this: Tennessee's numbers suggest the JD curriculum and bar-prep support are producing outcomes that beat the in-state competitive set, not just keeping pace with it.
A caveat worth naming plainly: the data pack does not break out which UBE or non-UBE jurisdiction these rates cover beyond "Tennessee," nor does it specify pass rates by class year beyond the one first-time cohort and the rolling two-year figure. Applicants planning to sit in a different state should treat the in-state numbers as a strong signal about the school's bar training, not a guarantee transferable to another jurisdiction's cut score or subject-matter emphasis.
Most of Tennessee Law's graduates land in jobs that count as full employment outcomes, and the class breaks down into a few clear clusters: a small but real Big Law pipeline, a much larger base in smaller Tennessee and regional firms, and steady placement into government, clerkships, and public interest work. Out of 124 total graduates, 91.1% were employed in full-time, long-term positions that were either bar-passage-required or JD-advantage roles — the standard measure of a strong outcome for a graduating class.
The Big Law numbers. Twelve graduates — 9.7% of the class — went to firms of 501 or more attorneys, the segment that anchors the market's highest starting salaries. That's a real, if modest, Big Law cohort for a class this size, and it sits alongside five more graduates at firms of 251–500 attorneys. Combined, roughly 14% of the class landed at a firm of 251+ attorneys, which is the rough proxy for "large-firm-track" outcomes nationally.
Where everyone else goes: small and mid-size Tennessee-market firms. The single largest slice of the class — 29 graduates — went to firms of 1–10 attorneys, with another 6 at firms of 11–25, 10 at firms of 26–50, 6 at firms of 51–100, and 6 more at firms of 101–250. Two graduates went solo. Put together, a substantial share of the class (53 of 124 graduates) is practicing at firms under 100 attorneys. The pack identifies "Tennessee" as the largest single employment category for the class overall, which lines up with what the firm-size distribution shows: this is fundamentally a school whose graduates build careers across the state's private bar, not primarily a pipeline into national Big Law markets.
Government, public interest, and clerkships. Eleven graduates (8.9%) went into government roles, and eight (6.5%) went into public interest positions — together accounting for roughly 15% of the class in service-oriented legal work. Clerkships add another meaningful data point: six graduates secured federal clerkships and eight secured state or local clerkships, for 14 total clerks out of 124 graduates, or better than 1 in 10. That's a substantial judicial-clerkship footprint for a class this size, and it typically signals strong academic performers who chose the clerkship route over an immediate firm start.
Business and industry. Ten graduates moved into business and industry roles — JD-advantage positions outside traditional practice, often in-house, compliance, or corporate roles that don't require bar passage but do leverage the law degree.
What this adds up to for a prospective applicant. If the goal is a shot at a 501+ Big Law seat, Tennessee Law places close to 1 in 10 graduates there — a real but limited pathway, concentrated presumably among students who compete for those seats through grades, journal work, or summer associate programs the pack doesn't itemize here. If the goal is a durable, well-rounded legal career centered on Tennessee's own market — small and mid-size firm practice, government service, or a clerkship credential — the outcomes data shows that's where the bulk of the class actually goes, and goes successfully, given the 91.1% full-employment rate. What the pack does not report is starting-salary breakdowns by employer size or geographic detail beyond the state-level employer count, so applicants weighing a specific target market (e.g., Nashville versus Memphis, or in-state versus regional relocation) should treat those specifics as open questions to raise directly with the school's career services office.
Illustrative: 3-year borrowing at the 2026-27 federal rate (8.07%) over 10 years; your figures depend on your offer and salary.
Yes — Tennessee runs a genuinely large experiential program relative to its size, and the seat counts show real student demand rather than just paper capacity. The school reports 118 clinic seats available, and 113 of them were filled, a fill rate of roughly 96%. That is not a program with empty slots nobody wants; it is one running close to full capacity.
Beyond clinics, 69 students were placed in field placements (externships with judges, agencies, or organizations that supervise students doing real legal work outside the building), and simulation courses — the practice-based classes that mimic litigation or transactional work without a live client — enrolled 334 student seats. That simulation number is larger than any single class year, which tells you students are stacking multiple simulation courses across their time at Tennessee rather than taking just one and moving on. On top of that, the school lists 23 co-curricular offerings, the moot court, mock trial, and competition-style activities that supplement classroom and clinical work.
The data pack does not name the specific clinics on offer (family law, criminal defense, tax, entrepreneurship, and similar labels are common at law schools this size, but Tennessee's own clinic names are not in this dataset), nor does it break down which practice areas the field placements cover. If a particular practice area — say environmental law, or a innocence project — is the reason you're looking at Tennessee, verify directly with the school which clinics are running in the year you'd enroll, since clinic offerings can rotate by semester and faculty availability.
With total JD enrollment at 419 across all years and an entering class of 140, clinics and field placements combined (113 + 69 = 182 seats) represent a substantial share of the upper-division student body, since clinics and externships are typically 2L/3L opportunities. In practical terms, a meaningful majority of students who want a clinic or field placement appear to get one, based on the near-full fill rate reported. That matters for your planning: at a school this size, experiential learning is not a boutique option reserved for a lucky few — it's built into the normal path through the upper-division curriculum.
What this doesn't answer is quality or supervision ratios — number of students per clinic professor, hours required, or whether placements are paid or credit-only. Those specifics aren't in the pack, so if hands-on training is central to your decision, ask admissions or current students directly about clinic caseloads and field-placement structure before you commit.
At Tennessee, a 164 LSAT and a 3.89 GPA sit at the school's reported medians, meaning half of the roughly 140-seat entering class scored at or above those numbers and half fell below. The 25th-75th percentile range runs 160-166 on the LSAT and 3.67-3.95 on GPA, so a 160 places you at the floor of the reported middle band while a 166 places you at the ceiling — useful anchors, not predictions of outcome. With 2,176 applications producing 539 offers (an overall admit rate of roughly 24.8%) and a class of about 140, Tennessee is selective enough that where your numbers sit relative to these bands matters for how you build the rest of your file, even though numbers alone never determine an outcome.
As of the 2025-26 cycle, the LSAT is scored 120-180 using two scored Logical Reasoning sections, one scored Reading Comprehension section, and an unscored variable section — Logic Games were removed from the exam in August 2024. Because law schools consider an applicant's highest score, and because most meaningful score movement comes from sustained study with official practice material over several months rather than a single weekend cram, the calculus for a Tennessee applicant is straightforward: a jump from, say, 158 to 164 doesn't just change your raw score, it moves you from below the 25th percentile to the reported median, which is the kind of shift that also tends to affect scholarship conversations (see the scholarship negotiation playbook at /law-school-scholarship-negotiation). For a structured approach to building a study plan, /how-to-study-for-the-lsat covers timeline and material selection in more depth than fits here.
Unlike the LSAT, your undergraduate GPA is fixed by the time you apply, which is precisely why Tennessee's 3.67-3.95 range should shape how you use the rest of the application rather than tempt you into retaking classes or delaying. If your GPA sits below 3.67, a strong personal statement, addenda explaining any anomalies (an illness semester, a work-heavy schedule, a difficult transfer), and a higher LSAT can all work together to round out the file — this is standard admissions practice at numbers-driven schools generally, not a Tennessee-specific promise of outcome.
A roughly 1-in-4 admit rate across 2,176 applications means Tennessee received far more applications than it had seats, which is typical for a public flagship law school with regional draw. That volume is a reason to treat your LSAT and GPA as genuinely load-bearing parts of the file — not because a specific score guarantees anything, but because in a large pool, numbers are frequently the first filter recommenders and files pass through before the qualitative review that follows. Treat the 160/164/166 and 3.67/3.89/3.95 bands as the coordinates you're plotting yourself against, not as a threshold to be feared or a promise to be banked on.
Apply as early in the cycle as your file allows, because a school fielding 2,176 applications for roughly 140 seats and admitting about 24.8% of applicants is working through a large, rolling pool where earlier files are read against more available seats and more scholarship budget. This is general admissions mechanics, not a Tennessee-specific guarantee, but it applies with particular force at a school this size: as the class fills over the cycle, both admission and the more generous scholarship offers tend to compress toward the applicants who applied earliest with complete files. For a month-by-month build-out of that timeline — when to take the LSAT, when to request letters, when to submit — see /law-school-application-timeline.
Given Tennessee's reported 160-164-166 LSAT band and 3.67-3.89-3.95 GPA band, know before you write a word of your personal statement roughly where your own numbers land in that range. If you're below the 25th percentile on either metric, that's where addenda and a sharper, more specific personal statement earn their keep — not to apologize for a number, but to give the file a reason to be read as more than a data point. If you're at or above the median on both, use the statement instead to answer the question every admissions committee actually asks itself: why this applicant, at this school, doing what after. Tennessee's substantial in-state employment footprint (its largest reported employment outcome category is in-state) is worth reflecting in your narrative if a Tennessee-based legal career is genuinely part of your plan — specificity like that reads very differently from a generic "I want to help people" statement.
Recommenders should be people who can speak to your analytical work directly — a professor who supervised a thesis or research project outweighs a more famous name who barely knows you. If your file has a gap year, a GPA dip in one semester, or a retaken LSAT, a short, factual addendum (not an essay-length apology) closes that loop before a reader has to guess. None of this is Tennessee-specific advice; it's how any numbers-plus-narrative admissions process at a school with a sizable applicant pool tends to work, and it applies with real weight here given the volume Tennessee reports.
About 89% of Tennessee's entering class receives some form of grant, with the reported 50th-percentile grant around $10,550 and most awarded aid falling in the "less than half tuition" band. Because scholarship offers are frequently negotiable — particularly if you hold a competing offer from a peer school with a stronger package — it's worth reading /law-school-scholarship-negotiation before you accept anything, and reviewing /law-school-loans-and-pslf and /is-law-school-worth-it for how federal loan limits and repayment plans (Grad PLUS is gone for new borrowers, and PSLF requires active enrollment in the income-driven RAP plan rather than the default Standard Plan) will shape what you actually pay over time. Treat scholarship and financing decisions as part of the application strategy itself, not an afterthought you'll deal with once the offer is in hand.
Getting a scholarship letter from Tennessee is the norm, not the exception — 89% of the entering class received some form of grant. But "got a scholarship" and "got a scholarship that meaningfully changes your bottom line" are different questions, and the distribution matters more than the headline percentage.
Here's the shape of it: 67% of grant recipients get an award covering less than half of tuition, another 18% land between half and full tuition, and 0% receive a full-tuition award. The reported median grant is $10,550. Tennessee's own tuition and fees run $20,562 a year, so a median award covers roughly half of tuition — helpful, but it still leaves the bulk of a ~$46,778 full cost of attendance (tuition, fees, and estimated living costs) to be financed some other way, whether that's savings, work income, or loans.
This is the piece applicants tend to skip past: a scholarship offer is a discount, not a ceiling on what you'll actually spend. Before you compare offers, run the real number — sticker cost of attendance minus your specific grant, per year, for three years — rather than reacting to the size of the award alone. A $15,000 award at a school with a $46,778 COA leaves a materially different gap than a $15,000 award somewhere with a $65,000 COA, so always evaluate a scholarship against this school's own cost structure rather than treating dollar amounts as comparable across schools.
The conditional-scholarship question you should ask directly. Many law schools attach GPA-based conditions to scholarships — keep a 3.0, keep your rank, or the award shrinks or disappears after 1L year. This is a well-documented risk across legal education generally, because law schools grade on a mandatory or de facto curve, which means a fixed percentage of every scholarship cohort will, by design, fall below whatever threshold is attached to their award, regardless of how hard they work. The data pack for Tennessee does not break out how many entering scholarship recipients had their awards reduced in recent cycles, so that risk profile isn't something this guide can quantify for you here — which means it's exactly the question to ask the admissions and financial aid office directly before you commit: is my offer conditioned on a minimum GPA or class rank, and what percentage of scholarship holders in recent years kept their full award after 1L? A school unwilling to answer that clearly is itself informative.
What this means for your leverage. If you're admitted with numbers at or above Tennessee's medians (LSAT 164, GPA 3.89), you're in a reasonable position to ask whether a larger award is available, particularly if you have a competing offer from a peer school. Scholarship negotiation is a normal, expected part of the process at most law schools — for a general playbook on how to approach that conversation, see our guide on law school scholarship negotiation. Whatever you're offered, weigh it against financing reality: as of the 2025-26 cycle, federal Direct Unsubsidized loans are capped, Grad PLUS has been eliminated for new borrowers, and any gap between your award and your true cost of attendance will likely need to be filled by private loans at market rates — a cost worth pricing in before you sign a deposit. (Verify current federal loan terms before relying on this, since these rules are time-sensitive; see our federal loans and PSLF guide for the mechanics.)
If your goal is to practice law in Tennessee, the school's own outcomes data lines up with that plan reasonably well: Tennessee reports its largest employment category as in-state placement, and 91.1% of the most recent graduating class landed in jobs that were full-time, long-term, and either bar-passage-required or JD-advantage. That's a strong baseline employment outcome, though it's worth remembering that this figure includes a wide range of job types, from large-firm associate roles to small-firm and government positions, not just Big Law offers.
What the employer mix actually looks like. Of Tennessee's graduates, about 9.7% (12 grads) went to the largest firms — the 501+ attorney category that anchors the widely cited ~$215,000 "Big Law" salary peak. The rest of the class spread across a broad range: 29 graduates went to firms of 1-10 attorneys, smaller clusters landed in the 11-25, 26-50, 51-100, 101-250, and 251-500 firm-size bands, 11 graduates (8.9%) went into government, 8 (6.5%) into public interest, 10 into business and industry, and 14 secured clerkships (6 federal, 8 state/local). That's a classic regional-school distribution: a real but modest Big Law pipeline, a much larger base of small-to-midsize firm and government jobs, and meaningful clerkship placement — a mix that tracks the broader pattern where a small peak of graduates enters the highest-paying tier while most land in the far larger, lower-paying majority of the market. If your target outcome is a Southeast firm job, government role, or clerkship rather than a national Big Law track, this distribution is directly relevant to you; if Big Law itself is the specific goal, understand that it's a real but minority outcome at Tennessee, not the median one.
Bar passage backs up the fundamentals. Tennessee's first-time bar pass rate of 85.6% ran meaningfully above the state's overall average of 80.01% for the same administration, and the two-year ultimate pass rate reached 89.66%. For a Southeast-focused applicant, a bar-passage track record that beats the state average matters more than a national ranking, since it's a direct signal about how well the school prepares students for the exam that actually licenses them to practice in-state.
Cost is the other half of "worth it." Tennessee's tuition and fees run $20,562 annually against an estimated full cost of attendance near $46,778 — a cost structure well below what many private and out-of-state public law schools charge, which changes the worth-it math considerably. A lower principal balance means a smaller monthly payment under either of the two federal repayment options available to new borrowers as of the 2025-26 cycle — the Standard Plan or the income-driven Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) — and it means the debt-to-starting-salary ratio is more forgiving for a graduate entering a regional firm or government job than it would be at a school charging double the tuition for a similar outcome. That arithmetic is exactly why cost matters as much as prestige when the realistic outcome is a strong regional legal career rather than a national Big Law track: a moderate debt load paired with a solid in-state bar-passage rate and dependable regional placement is often the more defensible "worth it" case than a higher-ranked, higher-cost school chasing a Big Law outcome that only a small share of any class actually lands. For the general framework on weighing debt against expected salary — including current federal loan limits and how PSLF now works for anyone considering the smaller government or public-interest slice of Tennessee's outcomes — see our guides on law school loans and PSLF and is law school worth it.