Courtney Latourrette L’24 was among a half dozen students nationwide randomly selected in a prize drawing for participants of a personal finance program offered through AccessLex Institute.
“Are you serious? No way! You guys are kidding!”
It took only seconds for Courtney Latourrette L’24, a Leadership Fellow and admissions ambassador at Elon University School of Law, to realize she’d been tricked.
The oversized check with her name on it was the first clue. The second clue: Applause and cheers from Elon Law leaders who quickly surrounded her as she walked into the school’s administrative suite thinking that she was about to lead an admissions tour.
That’s what admissions office supervisors told her she’d be doing on the afternoon of April 17, 2024. Instead of a tour, Latourrette discovered in a surprise presentation that tuition for her final trimester at Elon Law will be fully covered up to $25,000 with a MAX by AccessLex® Scholarship.
AccessLex Institute is a national nonprofit organization that advocates for expanded access and affordability to law school. Its MAX by AccessLex® is offered at 188 law schools and has been used by more than 80,000 students since inception.
“Our MAX program helps law students learn about finances along their journey through law school,” said Morgan Cutright, regional director for the Midsouth in the AccessLex Center for Education and Financial Capability. “A lot of times, one thing that’s missing in legal education is the financial component. This is our way of giving back and incentivizing students to engage with MAX content.”
AccessLex holds scholarship drawings several times per year with nine random grand prize winners each April – six who receive up to $25,000 and three who receive up to $40,000. This spring marked the second time in as many years that an Elon Law student’s name was drawn. AccessLex surprised Daphne Myers L’23 with news of her award during a virtual meeting in April 2022.
A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, Latourrette currently serves as co-director of the Elon Law Pro Bono Board and president of Elon Law’s chapter of the Innocence Project. She also works as a student representative for AccessLex.
“I feel so grateful and am so excited. I love AccessLex,” she said. “I’m pretty sure this is a dream – I’m still waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out!”
