<p>I am a junior in high school and am interested in becomming an environmental lawyer. In order to do so, can I major in environmental studies in college then go to law school? Does it work this way? Should I major in pre-law instead?</p>
<p>Consider the following: I know a number of lawyers who specialize in environmental law. Thinking of about 8 that I know, their college majors were: history(2), English, economics(2), math, chemistry, and accounting. As has often been said on this site, the way it works is as follows: To get into law school, you need a high college GPA and a high LSAT score. Your undergraduate major can be virtually anything. Law schools do not consider, as a factor in admission, any desire of a student to specialize in any particular area of the law. In law school, you do not specialize but instead are expected to get a broad based education in all the basic legal areas. As to environmental law, you may be able to take one course in law school, but virtually all environmental lawyers become so through work experience after law school. There is no "pre-law" major in college. There are colleges who profess to have pre-law "concentrations" while you are pursuing another major but as far as law schools are concerned having such a concentration adds nothing to the decision as to whether you should be admitted.</p>
<p>Thus environmental studies is fine, like virtually any other major, for getting into law school. Moreover, having an environmental background definitely does not hurt for being an environmental lawyer once you get there; the same applies to chemistry,and civil or chemical engineering; however, the same also applies to enonomics and accounting because a lot of environmental law involves business decisions and understanding how they are made. In other words, do not for now be overly concerned about what you need to major in at college but instead just understand that, whatever you do, you need to do very well in college.</p>
<p>great answer, thanks!</p>
<p>Not an answer to your question, but another question:</p>
<p>Why are you interested in environmental law? I only ask because I had the misfortune of practicing environmental law for a while (not by choice) and the work was extremely tedious and boring even for law firm work. It mainly consisted of studying the minutae of tons of poorly drafted regulations to figure out how liability should be allocated among various polluters. </p>
<p>And by "polluters," I mean companies that are the successors to companies that have long since disappeared, who lawfully (at the time) turned waste over to licensed disposal companies, and who had the misfortune of being among the few successor corporations that are solvent.</p>
<p>One assignment that was slightly more interesting -- but still pretty boring -- was helping to do an environmental audit of a paper mill that was about to be acquired. I got to schlep out to the mill and tour around with the plant engineer, take notes, and write up a report. </p>
<p>If you are interested in environmental law because you are an environmentalist, I would consider carefully investigating what it is that environmental lawyers actually do.</p>
<p>Perhaps you have done this already -- if so, please disregard my comments.</p>