<p>What undergrad courses would be most helpful in preparing to excel in law school (not get in)?</p>
<p>A few suggestions:</p>
<p>*Anything which involves a lot of reading. Think history.
*Logic courses - philosophy department?
*Something which will have you write tons of research papers.
*Engineering - learn to think inductively.
*Any small class which will require you to make presentations. Engineering, some history, etc would be good for this. Get used to preparing for something and speaking about it. That's the daily life of a first-year.
*Psych courses which use the case study method.
*Foreign language. It's the best way to learn how English works, and you'll need it to analyze statutes.</p>
<p>Hope that helps. :)</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>the reading, writing, and speaking seem to all fit history and I am very interested in that anyway</p>
<p>I am in b-school btw but i want to minor in something liberal arts that would be helpful and interesting</p>
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*Anything which involves a lot of reading.
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<p>Also can be found in philosophy courses.</p>
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*Something which will have you write tons of research papers.
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<p>As this as well. </p>
<p>Philosophy does not only assign enormous reading, the material itself is abtruse and dry. Writing on these texts requires the ability to interpret, appropriate, abstract, analyze, and apply acquired concepts.</p>
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*Logic courses -
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<p>I am not sure if anything beyond an introductory course would help; would symbolic or mathematical logic render one more proficient? Regardless, the latter two courses are worth enrollment merely because of the clarity of thought they afford, which is useful in all contexts.</p>
<p>While I did have philosophy/history in mind for some of those, I'll clarify my research paper comment (because I honestly don't know exactly how philosophy courses work in terms of research papers):</p>
<p>I meant research papers which are very open-ended - things where they say "Write 20 pages on the Roman provinces." That type of thing forces you how to learn to find sources, narrow them down, expand your search while getting relevant material, develop a thesis, and incorprate your research into your paper while maintaining your own ideas. That is different from something like English, where you are given a topic (Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, or the three books you just read by Steinbeck) and there are really a limited number of sources and most of the material comes from what you read in class. I guess I'm tryign to say that you should really take a course which forces you to find all of your sources from things outside of assigned/suggested reading.</p>
<p>AA, that wasn't my experience of literature courses on the college level at all. It was more like, "Write a paper relating to 20th century drama," and one was required to gain a knowledge of the work, the prevailing theories (usually contradictory) and develop a thesis. Even in a course on Shakespeare, the theories are virtually limitless and the student is expected to develop a thesis based on a close reading of the text and lots of reading of criticism -- which nearly always demands an exploration of sources not discussed in class. I have been in literature and other classes where "reflection" papers were assigned, which did not demand research, but these were few and far between.</p>
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Even in a course on Shakespeare, the theories are virtually limitless and the student is expected to develop a thesis based on a close reading of the text and lots of reading of criticism -- which nearly always demands an exploration of sources not discussed in class.
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<p>Morover, such papers emphasize adeptness in interdisciplinary exploration; I recall reading a text, which was originally written as an honors thesis, that traced the behaviors of Hamlet as implying Shakespeare's foreknowledge of philosophical skepticism.</p>
<p>Edit: In fact, I am reading it right now:)</p>
<p>In some ways though, English is different - because there is a starting point with the text and some structure. None of the legal writing papers I did had any connection with the cases we did in class - it really was all very detached from the work we did for the class and class discussion. I read some of the English papers for my friends (not grad-level English, just undergrad), and they really weren't required to use many outside sources and the basis of the papers seemed to be what they read for class. It wasn't like they would read MidSummer Night's Dream and the Merchant of Venice, but then be asked to write a paper on Shakespeare's tragedies. </p>
<p>Legal writing is also a lot more technical and structured than other writing (aside from technical). We can bicker about this, but I honestly think that, from what little liberal arts courses I've seen, legal writing is very different from English papers.</p>
<p>"they really weren't required to use many outside sources and the basis of the papers seemed to be what they read for class." Well, if that's true, I think there's a new struggle in my d's struggle with whether to major in history or English! Seriously, I will suggest she investigate...</p>
<p>However, my s is a political science major, and many of his papers are as you describe. And to my amazement some of his courses (and he has just finished his junior year) only require take-home essay exams. I never took political science, but in history we were basically on our own in the library to really explore the field, and we read a lot of primary sources on our own. </p>
<p>The moral of the story? Maybe every student ought to be investigating this question at each particular school and in each individual department, because there seems to be a lot of variation. Glad you brought this up.</p>
<p>Philosophy majors are typically required to consult sources not covered in class. It is typical to see many footnotes/endnotes in research papers referring to ideas/concepts originating in texts far outside the scope of the course.</p>
<p>Agree fully. And you said it better than I could have (of what I was trying to get at for a good course to prepare one for law school):</p>
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I never took political science, but in history we were basically on our own in the library to really explore the field, and we read a lot of primary sources on our own.
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<p>bump bump...</p>
<p>bump.............</p>