As a college student, I’ve been going back and forth on what career to follow. I’m a Psychology major. I’ve always said I wanted to be a psychologist/therapist/counselor. Before that, I said I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a family attorney. I changed my mind because I heard the law career is ”overcrowded.” I also heard people are having a hard time finding a job right out of law school. I hear law school is EXTREMELY tough. The LSAT is hard. I also hear to be a lawyer you have to be ”tough”, and that’s not me. I fear that I won’t make it to law school.
Do a sample LSAT before you decide it’s hard. Time yourself appropriately.
Some graduates from some law schools do indeed have trouble finding a job. All law schools publish their employment and bar passing statistics. So it’s not hard to figure out which law schools do a better job of churning out lawyers who actually get jobs in law firms.
Some lawyers are tough, some are not. Some therapists are tough and some are not. So not sure how much of a differentiator “toughness” is in either field.
Both career paths you are looking at require grad school. Before plopping down a carload of money for grad school- especially if you are ambivalent- why not decide you’re going to get a job out of undergrad and take some time to figure out what your next step is? Nobody needs to go to grad school after finishing undergrad- and for many people, being out in the workforce helps clarify some of your professional goals.
You don’t need to commit to either path just because you once “said” you wanted to be a lawyer. And you can’t study to become a family attorney- your first year classes will be Civil Procedure, Contracts, Torts, Criminal, Constitutional law… i.e. just like every other lawyer in the US. Much of what you will learn in law school- and will need to pass the bar- has nothing to do with your eventual practice in family law. So you need to decide if you’ve got the patience (and the appetite) to sit through Civ Pro and Torts!
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Yes, I’m sorry. I can’t study to become a family attorney. I just know that they’re different types of attorneys. I’m willing to go through Civil Procedure, Contracts, etc. I just don’t want to get into it and end up not being able to find employment.
As blossom said, how difficult it will be to find employment as a lawyer depends on which school you attend. Your LSAT score and GPA will determine which schools will admit you. Take a published LSAT for practice and get a score. Then people can tell you whether the schools you are likely to get in are “worth it”, eg likely to get you a job after graduation.
I’ve heard of some people studying for a year for the LSAT and going from a very low score to a pretty respectable score. Most people study for a few months.
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@davisyvonne007: Speaking here as a psych grad [albeit many years ago] who went to law school rather then grad school [my LSAT score was much better than the GRE, but that’s another story], I think think you may be worrying too much about the rigors of law school. Yes, You have to learn a lot of stuff. Yes. You have to pass a bar exam and prove that you learned that stuff. And I’m not really sure what the market is for family law attorneys these days. Most that I know are solo practitioners, and you’re not gong to make big law money, so you need to factor in the cost of law school. All that said, I’m not a particularly tough alpha male type, and yet I found a career path that suited me and gave me and my family a good living for the past 40+ years. Good luck. ATS