Undergraduate Major Before Law School?

Hey everybody,

I just want to ask for any opinions about majors before law school.
Before, I considered economics, but I found AP Macroeconomics painfully difficult.
I am also struggling considerably in AP Calculus AB at the moment.

GPA is an essential factor for law school admissions, so I do need to ensure that I do well in my major.
However, in the event that I don’t do well enough for law, I might not be able to have good career prospects with a degree in, say, the humanities (political science, psychology, etc).

I’m considering business majors as well, like finance. But I am not that interested in business affairs.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Any major is fine for law school so pick one that matches your interests and aptitudes. If you want to study business that route is fine and there are many choices of major. Once you get to college, take some intro level courses in different areas and see what you like. Strong critical reading and writing skills will help you in law school.

Major is irrelevant for law school.

^ What they said in the two previous posts.

Study what you like. I think a good broad education will help in law school and in general, so try some of everything in your electives: an Econ, a Philosophy, a Math, a couple of Science courses, a couple of Lit/English/Linguistics courses, a History/Anthro course or two, a Sociology and/or Poli Sci course, a Psych course, a Communications course, a foreign language course, etc. (some of these may be required anyway…)

At any rate, taking a wide range of courses your first two years will help you to figure out what you want to major in. Philosophy, Poli Sci and Econ are probably popular majors among pre-law students, but they’re popular majors among everyone else too. Major in what interests you most.

Regardless of major, if you are worried about post-grad employment, look into internships and become familiar with any career services offered.

Anything is fine as long as it requires you to do a lot of writing and thinking.

By far the most important skills for a lawyer are critical reading and writing - not public speaking or debate.

^what they all said.

Law and business are both big umbrellas that cover a variety of fields. (I would say that they cover ALL fields.)

You can major in–

  • theater
  • engineering
  • chemistry
  • nursing
  • poetry
  • Italian
  • food prep/ cooking
  • education
  • virtually anything.

Because if you think about it, all organizations are ruled by laws and contracts of some sort. Also, they need to bring in money and they use money; they create product and they market themselves, etc.

As the others have said, get thee to the Career Office and line up internships in your fields of interest.

http://lawschoolnumbers.com/application-prep/choosing-your-major-for-prelaw

As others have written, reading and writing skills are essential. But what are less commonly mentioned are logical thinking skills, which are tested on the LSAT and may be used when interpreting the conditions where a given law applies.

I agree with ucbalumnus on making sure you have the reading skills, writing skills and logical thinking skills, which are tested on the LSAT. I’m going to diverge a little from the others. While any major can be pre-law, there are majors that can set you apart from other job applicants with major law firms.So I would ask what type of law would you like to practice? Then I would major in a related field. So if you want to practice law involving business contracts, majoring in Business Finance is going to be a better major than Political Science. My son also aspires to law school and we are friends with a Senior Partner at one of the largest law firms in the US. The partner mainly deals with real estate contract law and has a business finance background which helps him understand the financial aspects of the real estate law. If you have a foreign language that you are proficient in, this will also set you apart. Another partner is fluent in Spanish and has an engineering background. You want to not only be able to get into law school, but also find a good job when you graduate.I could see that a degree in psychology or sociology would be be applicable to Family Law. With either of those degrees you can get a masters and find employment if you decide against law school.

@sahmkc I was thinking along the lines of corporate law, so dealing with business.
However, I need to find a balance between what I want and what is viable. Personally, I’ve been hesitant to choose majors that involve calculations and calculus, because I’ve noticed through my high schools studies of accounting, economics, and calculus that my strengths and interests do not lie there. If I major in these subjects, I would do fine, but my GPA would probably suffer dramatically.
But the problem there is certain majors like sociology and psychology (humanities and arts) have a smaller job market on their own. If I am not able to make it to law, then I may struggle to find employment.

@sonnet18 I would agree that if you want to got to law school then it would be best to have a high GPA along with good LSAT scores. Have you looked into schools that offer a Human Resources degree or a bachelor’s in Industrial Organizational Psychology (I/O bachelor’s degrees are harder to find). These degrees tend to have less math than Business Finance degrees. My degree was called Personnel Management (back in the day!) and it was a mixture of business and psychology classes. An HR bachelor’s degree will have employment opportunities if you change your mind about Law School.

MUSIC works quite well

Choose a major that you are likely to enjoy and that suits your aptitudes. It doesn’t matter what that major is but if it’s something you like, you are probably going to get better grades than if it was something you chose thinking that it would look good for law school admission.

You don’t have to study business in undergrad if you want to practice corporate/commercial law. Most lawyers with that type of practice do not have a business undergrad degree. It’s fine if you actually want to study business but it isn’t necessary. The reality is that most entering law students aren’t positive what type of law they want to practice, so to expect a student entering undergrad to know is pretty silly. As I said, you can eventually study any type of law, having come from any type of undergrad. The one possible exception is if you want to practice IP, where a hard science or Engineering degree is going to be of benefit. As for getting a job, that will largely depend on how you do in law school.

I know hundreds of lawyers, including my H, a D, a son-in-law, two siblings and many close friends. There is no single path to success in law.