Quick Bio: I just got my BBA in Accounting w/ a minor in BLAW, starting my MAcc in august, and hopefully finishing all the the CPA sections by the time I graduate next June. Out of all my classes though, I loved my BLAW and Fraud/Forensic Accounting classes the most, so I’m really considering going into Law.
With all that being said, law school is a huge commitment, both time and financially, so I was curious if anyone had any recommendations of a way I can get a taste of the law world with my business background.
Intern in a law firm–get your parents to call their friends who are lawyers and give you an internship. However, that may not be that helpful, since you won’t be doing real lawyer work or living a lawyer’s life. You’ll just see what law firms are like from a distant perspective. It might not be good!
Plus my parents aren’t friends with any lawyers. I was curious though if perhaps I could get in with my accounting background at maybe a tax-related law firm. I would thinking that accounting graduates would be more desired than most applicants trying to get the internships at these firms.
I really don’t know though, so that’s why I was asking…
My son just finished up an internship working for the in-house legal counsel of his university. It’s a department with around 5-6 attorneys. He did pretty substantial stuff, more so than he would have experienced as a paralegal. It was particularly interesting this semester bc he was working on immigration law matters as the university, both undergrad school and grad schools, such as med, dental, etc, were dealing with students and profs who were caught up in the travel ban. So, I’d suggest finding out if your school offers an internship with its legal dept.
@Noteworthy: You could certainly look at tax practices, if tax interests you. There’s no harm in reaching out–it’s not like they can not hire you twice. Your school may also have connections that can help you find an internship. This is one of the very few things pre-law advisers are good for.
It’s a step down from being an accountant, but take a year as a paralegal. If you like what you see, apply to law school. If you don’t, then apply for accounting jobs. (I am not familiar with accounting recruiting, so I don’t know if this would be a big detriment or not. I would think you could just be honest and say you wanted to decide if you wanted law or accounting, and now you know the answer is accounting. But you may want to check with someone else before you go this route.)
I remember when I started at a law firm there were 2 right out of college paralegals working for us. They both were there to see if they wanted to go to law school, neither of them had long term aspirations of being a paralegal (we had some of those too). After about 2 years one went to law school. The other couldn’t run away from the profession fast enough.
If you want to be in a tax law practice, personally I don’t think working for a university or in house counsel anywhere would be all that helpful. Priviate practice, especially at a larger firm, is a unique beast. To be honest, most people hate it but a few love it. I saw a large majority of those who started it thinking they would love it be wrong (myself included). They are usually a pretty flat pyramid system, and that is for a reason. Some people to simply fail out, but most self select that practicing in that environment is not for them.