Prospective lawyer-- what do I do in college?

Hello!

I am currently a high school senior, and am an spiring lawyer. I really have no idea where I’m going to college right now, but regardless of that, I was wondering what advice you all have about college extracurriculars, majors, etc. for people on a law track. I’ve heard that law schools actually don’t like you to do the college “Pre-Law” track. Is this true? I was considering a major in Political Science-- is this not a good decision? Finally, are there any college extracurriculars that really stand out to law schools?

You can major in anything as an undergraduate, and be eligible for law school admission. They base admissions on LSAT scores and GPAs, primarily, with some attention to other attributes (e.g. work experience, specialized skills and talents, extracurricular leadership, et al). Some colleges have “Pre-Law” advisers, but there really is no such thing as a “Pre-Law” major at most elite colleges. My son is planning to major in Poli. Sci. or Public Policy, with sights on Law School. My father was a lawyer who majored in English Literature, and he thought that good writing and communication skills were the best training possible. My nephew is a very successful corporate lawyer, who majored in History. A deceased family friend was corporate counsel for Blue Cross; he majored in Sanskrit, of all things, as an undergraduate at Harvard. It helped him focus on intricate language. Major in any subject that interests you, and do well. You will need to have some quantitative skills, because I believe the LSAT still has a Math section. It certainly used to. You can always take a refresher course, if your college has no Math requirement.

The LSAT has a logical reasoning section that presumably helps math and philosophy majors do well on it.

Political science is the most popular major among LSAT takers, although they make up only about a fifth of the total.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1430654

http://lawschoolnumbers.com can give you an idea of target GPA and LSAT scores for various law schools.

Work on your writing skills.

Something marketable like accounting/business/computer engineering, but maintain a high GPA. This way you have a fallback plan if you don’t go to law school or quit practicing. Also majoring in Spanish (or maybe Chinese) would help with transactional work at a biglaw firm or public interest work. (Spanish is a requirement for a lot of public interest jobs.)

The highest LSAT scores (often a differentiator) go to Philosophy and Math majors. Political Science, History, and English are other choices, or possible minors. No matter what, make sure to take a couple statistics classes as you’ll need the skills for any job in addition to the LSAT.

The posts above are all good ones.

Just find a subject that you like and do well in, and get the best grades and test scores possible–meaning “study a lot”. Also, try to figure out your passion in life, and do extracurriculars, classes, jobs, etc. around that passion. That will give you a strong “story” to put on law school applications–as long as your passion is truly a passion and your activities relating to that passion are all really designed to help fulfill your passion (i.e., law schools will see through a laundry list of things on an application, so you really should have a life goal around something you love, and law should just be a means towards that goal).

Accounting and some other business classes would probably be useful for corporate law.

At least some law schools these days prefer that you take a year or two off between college and law school, so if you work in a field that will be relevant to what you want to practice, that will help.

Do not major in “pre-law”, definitely. Nor should you necessarily work in a law firm, oddly enough.

Major in something that really interests you and keep your grades high. Law is multi-faceted. If you get your law degree then your major and interests will steer you into areas of law that you can concentrate on.
Writing, critical thinking skills are important.