So I am an undergraduate engineering major who is considering law school if my GPA is high enough and I do well on the LSATs. One concern I’ve heard from people is that once you get your law degree it is very difficult to move into any other field, partially because of your loan debt, partially because you will have no other relevant work experience, and also because employers will be suspicious of a J.D. applying for a non-legal position.
This worries me, because I don’t know if I would want to be a lawyer forever, or if I’d realize that I actually hate it. It seems like an engineering career won’t make me as much money, but at least with that degree I could move into a lot of different things if I wanted to. What do you guys think?
I don’t have anything to compare it to, but as a lawyer, very few of my friends from law school are still practicing law, at least in law firms, and many have moved to unrelated fields. There are two ways of moving from law to non-law:
Finding a job in a company as a lawyer, and moving within the company to a non-legal job. (Past bosses have done that; it usually requires having senior management move you from one job to another.)
Just moving completely from a legal job in one firm or company to a non-legal job in another company. That can be done, but it can take a lot of interviews.
It can be tough to move, cold-turkey, from a lawyer job to something else, but anything is explainable in interviews.
Keep in mind that we lawyers have lots of contact with businesses- usually clients or companies on whose boards we serve- and those businesses have career options for us.
I ditto Happyalumnus’ comments. Like many of my classmates I do not actively practice law anymore, although I still do take on adjunct law professors positions. By way of example, here are the professions of some of my classmates: CEO for non-profits, College Athletic Director, College Professor in another field, hedge fund executive, wall street executive, doctor (now that’s a circuitous path), Car wash owner (well a chain of them), housewife, charter school principal, FBI agent…etc
I know of a pair of lawyers w undergrad engineering degrees who started their own practice specializing in technical issues. It is a very successful business.
Also, all engineering firms employ lawyers. It would seem that you would go to the top of the hiring list if you could walk & chew gum at the same time.
Every aspirational law student confidently assumes he or she will make a lot of money in the profession, but for the vast majority of J.D.s that ends up not being the case, especially taking into account the hefty student loan debt. So be careful with that assumption. Also be wary of “grass is greener” thinking – many lawyers would probably assume that professional engineers have greater earning potential.
Generally it’s a bad idea to go to law school unless you are 100% sure you want to work as a lawyer or at least be identified as “a lawyer” for the rest of your career. J.D.'s often get pigeonholed, usuaully as unqualified for mid-level non-legal work or overqualified for entry-level non-legal work.
I would recommend taking a few years after undergrad exploring the job market before deciding on any graduate program. And there are a lot of graduate school options outside of more engineering or law school. I was lucky enough to get a job healthcare/research compliance as a J.D.; had I been aware of some of the M.P.H. and M.S. programs that are out there (but not hyper-marketed like law schools), I would not have gone the law school route.