<p>I've wanted to be a lawyer since I was a kid, but now I'm reading books like Law School Confidential and One L, and getting a more realistic perspective---and I'm not sure I want to do it. Law school doesn't sound like the intellectual bonanza I thought it would be, firm life sounds stifling, and I'm not really driven by money anyway so the high salary isn't that important to me.</p>
<p>My ambition is to be a CEO and possibly get into politics later on.</p>
<p>Should I get a JD/MBA? If not, what kind of person should get a JD/MBA?</p>
<p>The people who should get a JD/MBA are people who want to acquire the skill sets study of both a JD and MBA make available to active (people that work hard) participants. You're right, it's not an intellectual bonanza, most of higher education isn't. Life in any time sensitive industry is stifling and difficult.</p>
<p>Honestly, your mistake was putting the profession on a "pedestal" in the first place. There is no perfect, enjoyable profession--which the exception of those guys who paint clothes on SI models, but they're gay, so... Most people who wanted to be firefighters or cops since they were kids will hate it, most people who wanted to be doctors just wanted to be a "doctor" without any of the work, most people who want to be athletes don't want to push themselves physically to a point where they feel like they've been hit by a truck the next morning.</p>
<p>For the MBA, look at the curriculum of the school you're going to. Is there a specific skill set you want to develop that they offer a track for? Do you want to expand your own professional network with the alumni of the school you're interested in? If the answer to both of these is yes, you should get an MBA.</p>
<p>For the JD, if you don't want to be a practicing attorney, what does it get you? Do you need a greater understanding of law as it is practiced (Columbia is popular for black letter study), or do you want to study it slightly more in the abstract (Yale)? Is there a skill set (being able to handle massive amounts of information, being taught how to argue for something well and within a framework, having a basic understanding of judicial procedure) that a law school will give you that you find useful? If the answer to the second question is yes, then figure out the kind of law school you want to attend and attend it. I generally wouldn't recommend a JD to someone who does not want to practice law, but it's certainly your prerogative.</p>
<p>Law is customary for politicians, though not neccesary. But remember that law school and a law degree is a precedent for a public office - no one with knowledge of American history can disagree with this. Upwards of 80% of politicians are law school graduates, and it's much harder for that last 20% since you don't have the networks that would come from law school with the rest of those 80%.</p>
<p>Maybe those numbers are also indicative of lawyer/non-lawyer ratios at the lower more local levels of government, but what he said was public office. There are many many many forms of public office. To use congress as a sample group seems rather limited...</p>
<p>Top JD/MBA programs? I think the only way to judge is to look at which institutions have both strong JD and MBA programs. </p>
<p>The majority of the top 20 schools on the US News rankings for both degrees have strong programs on both sides, though some don't necessarily have both a JD and an MBA program considered to be of equal prestige--if that's what matters to you.</p>
<p>I mean, if you really want to maximize the value -- especially the networking and alumni value -- of the degrees, you'll do them separately and at different schools. An otherwise-equivalent MBA program loses value once you've already gotten one degree there. This is, of course, a very mild loss, and it has to be compared against the extra year that you lose.</p>