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Loan Repayment Assistance Program Application

The Law School’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) requires an applicant to submit the following three pieces of information:

First-Time Applicants

1. Application Form: The application form for the 2023 cycle closed as of March 31, 2023. Please contact the Financial Aid Office at financialaid@law.uchicago.edu with any questions.

2. Employer Certification (PDF): The employer certification must be submitted directly to the Law School's Financial Aid Office at financialaid@law.uchicago.edu by an applicant's employer.

3. Loan Documentation: You must provide the following loan documentation from your federal loan servicer via email to financialaid@law.uchicago.edu:

  • A consolidation account summary after your consolidation is complete identifying the loans included in the consolidation - This is not required if you did not consolidate your loans.
  • A general account summary that identifies all loans included in your Income Driven Repayment (IDR) payment
  • An IDR plan confirmation letter
  • Your most recent bill showing your payment date, amount and repayment plan
  • REQUIREMENT: All loans must be in good standing and in repayment. All required loan payments must be made prior to receiving your funding; your loans must remain in repayment at all times and cannot be in forbearance.

Re-Applicants

  • LRAP Application and Employment Certification as noted above.
  • A payment history of your 2022 payments (this should already be on file if you have been submitting monthly payment documentation).
  • An IDR renewal confirmation letter.  If your recertification has been extended, please provide your most recent IDR certification letter.
  • Your most recent billing statement that matches the IDR renewal confirmation letter.  

Deadlines

*Please submit the application and required documentation by December 5, 2022 to meet the priority review deadline. Any document not available by the deadline should be submitted as soon as it is received. Applications received or completed after December 5, 2022 will still be processed and reviewed in the order received but may result in delays in receiving funding. If you are approved for LRAP funding and choose to waive the repayment pause, the Office of Financial Aid and the Law School will work as quickly as possible to process LRAP applications, documentation, and check requests. However, you may need to make your first loan payment out of pocket before you receive your LRAP funding.

ALL APPLICATIONS MUST BE COMPLETED BY MARCH 31, 2023. Any application (including documentation) not received or completed by this date will not receive funding and the applicant will forfeit any LRAP funding for 2023, unless you have received the Committee's approval prior to this deadline.

LRAP Relevant Updates

Student Loan Repayment

As of November 22, 2022, the Department of Education extended the student loan repayment pause and interest accrual that began in March 2020. The student loan payment pause was extended until the debt relief program litigation is resolved, with payments restarting 60 days later.

On June 3, 2023, President Biden signed the debt ceiling bill into law that implemented a firm end date to the COVID student loan repayment pause, regardless of the SCOTUS decision on the Biden administration’s debt relief. The Department of Education has announced that student loan interest will resume starting on September 1, 2023, and payments will be due starting in October and that they will notify borrowers before payments restart. 

The Department of Education is updating studentaid.gov on a regular basis as the repayment restart approaches. We encourage you to review this information as well guidance from the AccessLex Institute on the repayment restart, which includes webinars they are offering on the repayment restart. Finally, AccessLex has a Returning to Repayment checklist that can help with next steps.

The Administration has been working on a new income-driven repayment plan option for the past year but they are accelerating implementation of some of the new plan’s changes this summer in time for the payment restart.

Debt Relief

On August 24, 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration and the U.S. Department of Education announced a federal student loan debt relief program. As of November 2022, debt relief implementation was put on hold by court order and on June 30, 2023, the Supreme Court blocked implementation of the debt relief program. The Administration responded with new planned action surrounding student loan debt relief, including a negotiated rulemaking session to try to implement debt relief via other options.