possible to do law school and engineering grad school at once to receive a dual-degre

Graduate School
1

<p>I am currently applying to college, interested in civil engineering and applied mathematics. I am applying to T10 undergrad programs, and I plan to go to either grad school for civil engineering or law school.</p>

<p>Is it possible at any school to do engineering at the graduate level and law school? What jobs are there for civil engineering/ applied mathematics BS degree holders with law school? Career paths? Average starting salary? Salary in general? I love civil engineering, but I am also attracted to law for some reason I cannot describe. Is law school useful in obtaining high leadership positions in engineering? </p>

<p>Btw. I plan to continue to be strong academically in terms of GPA as an undergrad to be able to be competitive for top graduate and law programs.</p>

2

<p>Grad school and law school are demanding on their own. Doing them simultaneously is not possible.</p>

3

<p>Some schools will offer a joint JD/MS or JD/MSE. Just do a google search for “joint jd ms engineering” or “combined jd ms engineering” or similar and you’ll find some. Syracuse and Toledo do for civil engineering specifically.</p>

4

<p>

There are joint programs at many law schools that will allow you to pursue an MS or PhD at the same time as your JD, but I do not think too many of them allow for civil engineering - just not much demand. Among others, Stanford allows you to go JD/MS in BioE, CS, or EE, and I am sure that there are at least a few that have Civil. Still, it will be quite difficult and take probably almost as long as doing them sequentially, probably 4+ years for JD/MS and 7+ years for JD/PhD. You need to have more drive, better academic skills, deeper pockets, and a strong career plan to make something like this happen.</p>

<p>But it is possible.</p>

<p>

Better to ask this on the law school forums, but patent/IP law immediately comes to mind - you generally need a technical undergrad to work in those areas.</p>

<p>

Generally no - engineering and law are two extremely different fields of endeavor with minimal overlap. Generally speaking, once you get your law degree you will either need to give up professional engineering or find a way to have two distinct careers.</p>

<p>Now, I did meet a guy once who was a JD/PhD in EE, who was a professor, owned his own engineering firm, AND ran his own patent law firm, but all these were independent - the law degree did not substantially help him as an engineer or academic.</p>

5

<p>go for the JD/PHD</p>

6

<p>There may be some schools that offer a joint MS in engineering and JD - as others have said, a Google search will reveal that. And there are jobs - a lawyer with an engineering background will be great in patent law and intellectual property, and can serve as in-house counsel to many engineering and technology firms. If you graduate from a top law school, you can stand to make a lot of money doing that (low six figures to begin). But I am more concerned with the fact that you are considering this degree not because you aspire to any one particular field or position, but simply because you can’t decide which one you want.</p>

<p>You are just applying to college now. Many students do change their minds - I was prelaw when I first began college, and I’m in a PhD program now desiring to be a professor. But maybe you won’t change your mind, which also happens a lot. Still, slow your role a little bit. Concentrate on getting into college now. As you go through your college career - especially junior year, and the end of sophomore year - begin thinking about what you really want to do next. Graduate school choices are driven not solely by interests, but by career needs. You don’t get a JD because you are “attracted to law,” you get a JD because you want to be a lawyer. Joint degrees aren’t really useful for someone who can’t decide between two areas, because it’s only delaying their decision. They’re for people who plan to use BOTH degrees in some kind of career - like a JD/MSW who wants to do family law or court advocacy, or a JD/MBA who wants to do corporate/contracts/taxation law.</p>

<p>Since you know early that you are interested in the two fields, you can do something with that. Once you’re in college, you can set up informational interviews with lawyers and engineers that are designed to help you see what these people do in their every day lives. You can do some searching online for the pros and cons (for example - the law market is horrible right now - but for graduates from the top 10-15 law schools, there will always be jobs). Waiting until you’re in college is also important because you’ll be able to be more realistic about your future. Everyone “plans” to continue to be strong academically; no one plans ahead of time to get a 2.7 or a 3.1 GPA. But if you do have a 3.1 GPA in your junior year, admission to the top law schools is less likely, so maybe you’ll decide to go the engineering route instead. And there’s no law saying you have to go to grad/law school directly after college; many people take several years off and are still very successful. You could even get a master’s in engineering, work as an engineer for several years and then decide to go to law school.</p>

<p>So basically, you have at least another 3.5 years to make this decision and a lot of changes and life events that will happen in between that may have a bearing on your decision, so right now, just focus on getting into college.</p>

<p>And I wouldn’t go for the JD/PhD unless you have significant interest in being a legal scholar and/or some kind of research academic who focuses on the relationship between engineering and the law. That’s what a JD/PhD is for.</p>

7

<p>“Grad school and law school are demanding on their own. Doing them simultaneously is not possible.”</p>

<p>Please no one listen to this. Many, many people do grad school and law school at the same time. It actually cuts down the time it would take to finish each separately in many instances.</p>

8

<p>Wow, having gone to grad school in civil engineering, I cannot imagine attending law school at the same time. All of the students in my program had research projects that were quite demanding. We were also writing computer programs and taking challenging classes. We didn’t have a lot of time for sleep, much less law school.</p>

<p>I had one friend who got her MS in civil engineering, and then went on to law school and became a patent attorney.</p>

9

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<p>I’m pretty sure attending another degreed program like law school would be against the contract I had to sign when I started grad school. It’s like holding a second job outside of grad school isn’t allowed.</p>

10

<p>It’s only possible if you’re in a joint degree program. In general, joint degrees are a bit more lax in timeline, requirements, expectations compared to the single degree programs.
Especially for the first couple years when you’d have a heavy course load in BOTH programs, it might be possible to get all the homework and readings done, but it’s awfully difficult to be in two places at once.</p>

11

<p>I’m a law grad, and it’s definitely possible to do a joint degree. Many schools have a limited number of established joint programs (Google is your friend there), but some schools will also work with you to forge your own path, particularly after you’ve attended for a year. In my experience, the JD/PhD programs are almost all set up so that you do a year of law school (and nothing but law school) and then a year of PhD classes (and nothing but PhD classes), or vice-versa. The first year of law school is highly structured, and you often have a heavy courseload. After that, the load is lighter, and if you can get credit for some of your PhD classes, it’s manageable. Similarly, the first year of PhD programs is often fairly structured (though not as much as law school), but after the courses are finished (possibly after year 2), you have more flexibility.</p>

<p>However, most pre-established JD/PhD programs are not in hard sciences or engineering. There is a lot less clear overlap between engineering and law, and so doing things like getting dual credit for courses could be tough.</p>

<p>As for what you could do with the joint degree, this would be a major thing to think about. Almost everyone you ask in law will tell you to look at IP. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other law practice that would benefit directly from an engineering degree. And if you want to do IP, you really don’t need a graduate engineering degree – an undergrad degree is sufficient. The other possibility I can think of is specialized law practice – for example, if you did aerospace engineering, the National Transportation Safety Board might be more interested in you as a lawyer… but I really think that you’d be nearly as good a choice with just a BS in aerospace (and it would be much less time, cost, and stress).</p>

<p>Obviously I know less about what engineers could get from a JD, but my instinct is that if you want something to give you more business clout, an MBA would be a much better choice. A JD is useful in many non-law-practice positions, but I can’t think of many that overlap with civil engineering. Talk to your professors, but my hunch is that a JD would be, at best, a neutral factor.</p>

<p>Finally, if you are interested in academics, a JD/PhD could be useful. PhDs are becoming more common among law professors (they are not required), and an unusual PhD could be helpful to you. Even there, though, you would need to be able to tie it into law – so you’d want to be interested in teaching and writing in IP law (for example). Again, ask your engineering profs, but my guess is a JD wouldn’t help you at all in finding academic positions in engineering, either. </p>

<p>Bottom line: You may be better off just doing one of the two programs really well.<br>
Upside: If you decide to apply to law school, some will be interested in your math/engineering background, because it will make you stand out (though be prepared for everyone to assume that you want to do IP).</p>

<p>Good luck in college!</p>

12

<p>While I mostly agree with Ducky Ducky, your experience may be unique. Normally a civil engineer can’t sit for the patent bar. Getting an MS in another science field may fulfill this requirement (you should look at patent bar requirements, it’s not as clear cut with graduate degrees).</p>

13

<p>Thanks you everyone. I decided that I’ll go to college first and than think about grad school. At least now I know that it is possible to do dual-degree programs.</p>

14

<p>Having a law degree with a civil engineering background may be useful for the construction industry as a lot of issues may arise in regards to contracts, but I wouldn’t say a lawyer needs any understanding of civil engineering, physics, or math in order to specialize in construction/contracting cases.</p>

<p>The only other use for a law degree I can think of is if you want to go into public policy involving environmental and transportation issues but I’ve never seen these. But this is definitely not something you need a law degree for.</p>

<p>It’s far more common to see a civil engineer with an MBA rather than a JD, and I know there are schools which have MS/MBA joint programs. If you want to move up to managerial positions in engineering, either get a master’s in a specialized civil engineering field, or get an MBA, or just work hard and prove your competence.</p>