Law School Applicant with no legal experience?

I’ve always considered law school at the back of mind, but as a rising sophmore, it seems like I’ve committed to engineering - and I’m probably not going to take the time to do legal internships or anything geared towards getting me into law school.

I’m assuming, then that this makes getting into law school impossible? If I walk in with a 180 LSAT score and a 3.9 GPA (like, hypothetically), it’s not like they’re going to overlook the fact that the thing on my resume most faintly related to law school would be the debate team, right?

With a 180 LSAT/3.9 GPA, law schools will overlook just about anything short of cheating or a criminal record. The best reason to do an internship related to law in college is so that YOU will know what the life of a lawyer is like, and can then decide whether a career in law will be satisfying.

You most certainly don’t need law-related experience in order to be accepted at law school.

@frazzled1 oh, so perhaps I have a false picture of how law school admissions work - I know that most graduate programs care more about your research/work experience than your grades beyond a certain threshold. I guess law school doesn’t require that much foundational knowledge?

If you look through some of the threads here, and read toplawschoolsdotcom and other law school forums, you’ll see that LSAT and GPA are almost universally acknowledged as the most important factors in law school admissions. Some say they’re the only factors that matter; some say that factors such as undergrad institution, work experience, and ECs are also considered. But precious few applicants with a 180 LSAT will be refused anywhere.

Law school admissions are more transparent and more quantifiable than undergrad admissions, or so it has always seemed to me. If you’re interested in law school, I hope you’ll spend some time reading here, TLS, Law School Transparency, and Above the Law. You’ll pick up a pretty good understanding of the process and probably find it entertaining, as well.

Exactly. Unlike other professional schools or grad schools, ECs are really not much of a factor in LS admissions. Yes, you have to have some ECs, but unless they are world class (Rhodes Scholar, Olympic Champion, traveling rock star lead singer), they are almost a non-factor in LS admissions. The reason that they become a non-factor is that everyone has something, ~95% of which are just ‘average’, and which then cancel out.

Look at it this way, the tippy top undergrad colleges do not offer anything close to ‘foundational legal knowledge’ to undergrads, yet many of them boast a top law school from which they accept plenty of their own undergrads.

Wow, thanks a lot for the replies. Looks like I have a potential backup plan with me.

It is unfortunate that they don’t seem to calibrate your GPA to your major, but I suppose incentives to inflate your average GPA ranking hold precedence.

I did absolutely zero that was law-related when I was in college. The first law-related anything was my first day of law school, and my first law-related job was a summer associate job in a law firm after my first year of law school.

In short: it doesn’t matter whether or not you have any law-related experience before law school.