Annual Fund & Scholarships

Annual Fund

Scholarships.
Faculty support.
Student activities.
Career services.

The Law Annual Fund supports these areas and more that are absolutely critical components of the legal education at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. This unrestricted, current-use fund allows the college to meet needs and create new opportunities.

For example, the fund helps students to build professional skills in the challenging legal job market by creating and funding Career Start Grants. The College pays the graduate a short-term stipend while they work free of charge for a firm, corporation, or public interest agency to gain experience, marketability, and professional connections.

This is a time when state support is only 20 percent of our operating budget and decreasing. Among our students, 18.4 percent report coming from families with a yearly income of less than $50,000, and 15.5 percent are first-generation college graduates. The need is great, and our growing annual fund is making a difference.

The Moritz College of Law is one of the nation's preeminent public law schools, leading with programs like legal writing, alternative dispute resolution, Election Law @ Moritz, Mentoring and More @ Moritz, legal clinics, the Program on Law and Leadership, and many experiential courses.

Your gift is essential to the continued development of innovative programs, recruitment of outstanding students, and support of our renowned faculty.

 

Scholarships

The Moritz College of Law currently provides over $4 million in grants and scholarships to deserving students. Scholarships include:

Leadership Scholarships

Moritz awards full and partial, three-year scholarships to incoming high achieving J.D. candidates who demonstrate strong leadership potential. Moritz Law is creating a community of leaders who want to maximize their legal education and leadership potential through specialized coursework, unique experiences, and contact with distinguished practitioners. Leadership Scholars will have the opportunity to work with an advisor to develop an individualized leadership plan based on their distinctive strengths and goals.

Diversity Enrichment Awards

The College’s Diversity Enrichment Awards have consistently created the results that they were intended to deliver: drawing increasingly diverse students while continuing to improve the quality of the student body. Recipients of such awards are not just bringing ethnic diversity to the College, but they are also drawing students with a variety of work experiences and backgrounds.

Financial Need Grants

These grants, which are based on financial need, are awarded to students who have strong academic backgrounds and demonstrate potential to be successful lawyers.

Profiles and Features

James Verdi '10 used a Career Start Grant to find employment in a new city.

"I decided to move to Washington, D.C. after graduation. With few connections, I needed a way to get my foot in the door. The leverage I needed to find a position came from the Career Start Grant."

At a professional development event, James met an attorney from the U.S. Postal Service. He used the grant to work in the employment and labor section of the Postal Service's law department. James was a major asset in an office that was short-staffed, allowing him to gain experience by drafting high-level policy recommendations, organizing meetings with senior clients in labor relations, working on cases, and serving as second-chair in a national arbitration case presided over by one of the nation's most respected arbitrators.