I am a pre-law student who was just accepted to an interdisciplinary Legal Studies major. The major is such that I can make my course load as easy or difficult as I please, and I have very much leaned toward the former in taking courses to qualify for the major.
The reason I bring this up is that despite the “GPA trumps all” advice I’ve seen here, I’m worried that my academic background might raise eyebrows, especially since most of the students at my school double major. Because of this, I’ve been thinking of picking up a minor as a way to show academic passion, and there’s one I’ve been looking at that I only need to take four courses to complete.
The minor wouldn’t be difficult, but pursuing it would be less protective of my GPA than just sticking with the Legal Studies major. To pose the question I came here to ask, would adding a minor make me a more attractive law school applicant?
Lawyer here. I’d be interested to know what kinds of courses make up your curriculum.
You can study anything and then attend law school. In my opinion it is best to study something that involves a lot of reading, writing, and critical analysis. Philosophy is a good one. I studied psychology. I’d avoid criminal justice.
Depends when you plan to apply to law school, and what tier you are aiming for. If you are aiming top tier, then you will be working for a few years after UG and a minor won’t make any difference. If you plan to apply straight from UG, to a local law school that will be seeing a lot of apps from your uni, they will have a lot of comparisons available, and the minor still might not make any difference- b/c after the qualifying cuts (LSAT & GPA) are made, the AOs will be able to recognize who has done the things to make themselves stand out & who hasn’t.
Rather than adding a minor, your time would be better spent doing actual work (volunteer) in the real world in an area that matches your post law school goals. Legal Aid, Agricultural Labor Relations, Refugees, Domestic Violence Survivors, Environmental…whatever makes you want to go to law school to get the Justice toolkit.
Depending on the field, a second language could be an asset. Speech, Debate and Drama are all helpful if you want to be a trial attorney.
If you only want to make gobs of money and live a soul sucking existence, then just do LSAT prep and purchase canned study outlines for your 1L classes and maximize your GPA.
to be a more attractive candidate for a T14, a minor is of little/no value; instead, a major in a traditional liberal arts discipline (or business or engineering) would be of more help. (Legal Studies is not it.)
Legal studies → law seems rather one-dimensional… why not a major in a subject relating to the area of law you are interested in (e.g. engineering for patent or intellectual property law, business for business law, sociology for family (and various other kinds of) law, environmental science or social science for environmental law, etc.)?