<p>Good for you for thinking ahead!</p>
<p>First of all, you can major in just about anything that you enjoy in college. However, I would recommend that you stay away from majors like "pre-law" or "legal studies", though it does not sound like you are heading in that direction. I would recommend that you take courses that will help you to develop and that will demonstrate your command of critical thinking skills. </p>
<p>When the time comes, you may decide that you want to work in investment banking (or some other field) for a couple of years (or more) after you graduate from college. That is just fine, and many of the top law schools draw a signigicant percentage of their students (often over 50%) from the pool of applicants who have one or more years of post-college work experience or graduate study. </p>
<p>When you take the LSAT, the only real constraint for you is that your score is good for only five years, and many of the top law schools want to see a score that is "fresher" than that. You should check with the law schools to which you are interested in applying to determine what they want. I would also highly recommend preparing well and taking the LSAT only once. While LSAC (the service that administers the LSAT and collects information about law school entering classes, like GPAs and LSAT scores of admitted students) reports only the highest LSAT scores of matriculating law students, most of the top law schools will average multiple LSAT scores and require an explanation of why you needed to take the LSAT more than once (I wouldn't recommend lack of preparation as an excuse).</p>
<p>Your GPA and LSAT score form a significant piece of your profile when applying to law schools. That said, to the extent that you are "in the range" to be admitted to a particular law school (typically, that means that you are somewhere within the 25th/75th percentile of the GPA and LSAT numbers for a given law school), most, if not all, of the top law schools will then look at the rest of your admissions folder, including your personal statement, recommendations, resume, quality and breadth of coursework, work experience, etc. to determine whether or not you will be granted admission.</p>
<p>In my opinion and based upon my experience, Bosque has vastly understated the role that factors other than LSAT and GPA play. Those are the "make or break" factors, while LSAT and GPA are simply your admission ticket to play in the big game of who will be admitted in a given year. Oh, and legacy status does matter (but typically legacy for law school is only legacy if a parent or grandparent attended that law school).</p>
<p>During law school, you will likely apply for summer and then permanent jobs through on campus recruiting. There are no "good" or "bad" law firms to be in, but different law firms differ in the amount of compensation you will receive, specialize in different areas, some of which may be of more or less interest to you, differ in geographic location, differ in types of clients served, differ in the commitment and sacrifices of your time and hours that may be expected, and, well, you get the idea. You will have to closely examine the information that is available to you through your recruiting office at law school, information generally available to the public through publications and the internet and information you will discover when you interview with law firms and ask questions. </p>
<p>Upon beginning your legal career in a law firm, you will typically be an "associate", meaning that you are simply an attorney associated with that particular law firm. Associates are often categorized as "first years", "second years", "eighth years", etc. to differentiate among associates who have been out of law school for differing amounts of time. Typically, a junior associate (unofficial title, typically first through third year associates) works with either a mid-level associate (again, unofficial title, typically third through fourth or fifth year associates) or a senior associate (fifth year associates and up). Partnership may or may not be offered to an associate ever, though if it is offered, depending upon the firm, it may be offered anywhere between the sixth through the twelfth year of being an associate. Sometimes, there is an interim title like "counsel" that is given, and sometimes there is a layer of non-equity partnership that may be a prelude to equity partnership or may be the final role for a given attorney.</p>
<p>I hope that this was helpful.</p>