18K is not a bad offer at all!
Did you get scholarships from many schools?

Depends on the school and your credential. It's not really a scholarship but more like a partial tuition waiver, and as far as these are concerned, people are able to get 50% waived and even 100% waived at times, but depends on the school again. If the choice is good school (let's say top 10) full price or "good" school (let's say 30th-40th best) with 18K waiver, I would go with the top 10.

No doubt. I only applied for top schools and got admitted to several so far but with no fee waivers. I was just wandering if you got your fee waivers from top schools.

18K is a very generous scholarship, especially if it is merit- rather than need-based. You won't receive a free-ride unless for financial reasons. Graduate programs are--for better or worse--for those who can afford tuitions...

I've received 25k from a Top 15 school, but I'm still waiting the response from those at the Top 10.

I've received 25k from a Top 15 school, but I'm still waiting the response from those at the Top 10.

I don't see any logic in some of the scholarship offers we've seen. Best so far is 30k (to 20 school). Still waiting on decisions from other elite schools. Nothing from NYU other than acceptance. One of the other T15 schools never offers scholarships from what I see. When asked up front they said they don't grant them. Average scholarship has been about 18k of the schools that have offered them. Didn't apply to any schools other than Tier1 and at least top 25 or better. All scholarships were merit based and not need.

Still waiting to hear from HLS and Stanford as far as acceptance (we applied late). With Michigan and UC Berkeley waiting to hear on scholarship offers.

The school have no control over living costs so if you go to NYU or Stanford, even with a big scholarship, it still is going to be expensive there. That is likely why we won't go to NYU. Cost of living is crazy expensive there. Quality of life really isn't that great to be honest unless you have a lot of money. The area around NYC isn't that interesting. Upstate New York is nice but around NYC it is just a big housing area with no really scenic landscape. I'd rather be in Boston.

No doubt, there is a significant cost to getting an LLM in the US. Based on your situation I would be very cost conscious. The chance of getting a job with an LLM for a foreign student is very small. Most firms are reluctant to invest much time, energy and money into an associate that will leave the US and go back to their home country.

For many firms you would need to pass the bar exam. Most foreign LLM student take the NY bar. But then you there is a huge amount of competition for jobs. I read somewhere over 4,000 foreign LLM candidates sit for the NY bar every year. That is more than ALL other states combined on an annual basis and MORE than most states have had in their entire time of allowing foreign educated lawyers to sit for the bar.

The passage rate is incredibly low as well. For NY the passage rate for foreign LLM students is about 33%. For California it is even worse at about 16% if I recall correctly. Overall passage rates for all other jurisdictions (excluding CA and NY) it is a dismal 34%. In 2012 almost 6,000 foreign trained lawyers sat for the bar in all jurisdiction where they could in 2012, less than 1900 passed!

For all takers of the California bar the average passing rate is 51% for 2012. For NY, 61%. I use 2012 as I could find statistics for both US and foreign trained lawyers for a direct comparison. One of the highest bar passage rates for foreign lawyers was Arizona. About 67% of the foreign trained lawyers pass the bar there. Tennessee had a miserable 6% passage rate. Other states were worse but not with enough people to really be significant.

I wouldn't plan on trying to get a job in the US unless you have a good chance of passing the bar. If I were going to return to a foreign country, I would probably weight my school's cost higher than the ranking with maybe 3 exceptions, Harvard, Yale and Stanford. If I had to pay to got to Northwester at full price or Uni of Texas (Austin), I would save a lot of money and go to Texas and still be at an elite school. I would save a lot of money on living expenses AND tuition. It would be over $25,000 for the year.

I must admit, I agree a lot with what you say. For me personally it would be worth a much higher risk if I get into HLS. I believe that Harvard has the kind of reputation that would open some doors back in europe for me, where I would not be so certain with lets say NYU or Berkly or even Stanford which have great programs but not the same reputation back in europe. However even with HLS I am not sure if I would take on the whole tuition cost. It is just to risky... Who knows if it would pay off in 3,5 or 10 years or if it wouldnt make a difference on my carrer at all...
What do you think, have harvard graduates a better chance on the US market?
Oh and this statistics are great. I did not know that the pass rates are that bad in NYC for llm-s... Do you maybe know if the pass rate for civil law lawyers are even worse?