Hello! I am very interested in becoming a lawyer and I was wondering which major would be better for law school prep:
Political Science with a concentration in American Government and Politics
or
History with a concentration in Rights, Law and the State
It doesn’t matter from the Law School’s perspective. All that matters is what you want to do with your law degree. Law is a big umbrella that covers nearly every subject. You could be an art major and attend a top law school. It’s possible to focus on arts in the law. You could be an engineer, and in fact engineering is great for a law degree. Medical background, gender studies, area studies (such as an Asian country or Brazil)–basically almost anything you can imagine works with law. Someone someplace is conducting law in that area. Do you want to go into deals? Then maybe a business degree or economics or finance. Do you want to do public interest work for children, prisoners, human rights? You may want to figure out a major that works with those fields, then do internships in those areas, advocacy work before law school.
The most important thing is that you find your passion. Try to find a law school or law faculty that shares your passion. You can go onto law school websites and find what professors do and/or are interested in. Click on the tab that says “centers” or “programs” to see other specialties of your chosen law schools. Academic law is vastly different from practicing law, however. Getting an internship or summer job with a firm or for a public interest law practice is helpful so that you can see what happens in the practice of law. All of this will both help your application and will help you figure out what you want to do in the field.
You will need–
- Excellent grades regardless of what you specialize in
- LSAT (now one or two schools are accepting the GRE) scores in the 98%tile or above for top schools
- A great essay, recommendations, application.