That's a pretty broad question, TigerJin! Sadly, we at PowerScore are not experts on financial aid. Our best advice is that you should contact the schools that you are interested in and ask them about the aid application process, as it may vary from school to school.
One thing appears to be constant, and that is that you will need ti fill out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA):
https://fafsa.ed.gov/ . That's going to require gathering a lot of information from a variety of sources, and you should start that process now. No need to wait until you have been accepted anywhere!
LSAC has some good resources you should look at:
http://www.lsac.org/jd/financing-law-sc ... d-overview
As to the scholarships, those will vary from case to case, but if there are any that interest you, go ahead and reach out to gather more information now. There may be general law school scholarships that you could qualify for no matter where you go to school, and they might be happy to see your application now, knowing that any funds they offer will be contingent on your being accepted somewhere. Other scholarships may be specific to your chosen law school, and you might need to wait until you have been accepted to apply for those. That would be a good conversation to have with the school once you have an offer in hand, but before you accept. If your LSAT and GPA are good enough, you may be able to use those numbers to leverage some additional aid from them! You may find that a lower-tier law school is able to offer you a better aid package than a higher-tier school, and you could find them essentially "bidding" to get you to accept their offer.
Do your homework on scholarships and financial aid - there's a lot out there, and you shouldn't wait until you have offers in hand to begin investigating them.
Good luck! I wish we could be more help!
Adam M. Tyson
PowerScore LSAT, GRE, ACT and SAT Instructor
Follow me on Twitter at
https://twitter.com/LSATadam
