Generally I want to major in Law but I cannot understand the process it takes to reach that step. While I’m searching on the majors list of a college website the term “Pre-Law” comes many times.
You need a bachelors degree and LSAT score to get into law school. Your bachelors degree can be in any major. Pre-law is not a major. Students refer to themselves as prelaw just to indicate that they plan to go to law school. The only limitation on undergrad major is that it should be a subject in which you can get a high enough gpa to be competitive for law school admission.
Then wait, does it mean that the Law School isn’t an undergrad and that ,in the US, there are no undergrad majors in which students graduate to become lawyers???!
Law school in the US is a graduate degree. First you do a BA (4 years) in any major. JAMCAFE was right. Then you apply for law school. Law Schools tend to be 3 years in length to earn your JD degree (juris doctorate). There’s also an LLM and a JSD (equivalent to a PH.D.). It’s best to get into a top law school for your JD because 1) cost of attending is high for all law schools (meaning loans) and 2) top law schools tend to attract top recruiters and you will get a good-paying job to pay the loans (the school offers serious networking opportunities) and 3) if you decide to go into public interest law (which tends to not pay well), top law schools tend to have loan forgiveness programs. Because employment statistics vary greatly from law school to law school, you should research thoroughly what percentage of graduates work in a field requiring a JD degree, rather than say go into bar tending because they can’t find law work. Most schools post their stats prominently–I think they’re required to. The ABA also lists employment stats for schools. Expect to score in the 98th percentile or above on the LSAT (the entrance exam) if you hope to attend a top law school. The schools themselves don’t have score cut-offs, but the competition is such that your fellow law-student wannabes will have pounded their heads against LSAT practice tests so much that you’ll have to score at that level to beat them in order to get into UMich, Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, etc. If you decide that you want to go to a smaller or lesser-named school, plan to be in the top 10% of yoru class so that you can get a decent job. The jobs market tends to have two means. One at about $160K starting salary and one at about $50K starting salary. Being in the top 10% guarantees that you’ll be in the top group and so can pay your school loans, unless you are in public interest and your school offers loan forgiveness.
@Dustyfeathers : “First you do a BA (4 years) in any major. JAMCAFE was right. Then you apply for law school. Law Schools tend to be 3 years in length to earn your JD degree (juris doctorate)”
So you said in any major. I can’t get it why should I major in something ,say History or American Literature -or very unlikely being STEM, but just presume so- that is different from the career I want? How would this ,seemingly, unrelated major affect my study and career in Law??
*For some background about my educational environment, I’m from Egypt and here the students can get directly into law studies as a BA, they graduate, become lawyers and they work as legals for companies from different businesses.
From a US law school perspective, there’s a lot more to a law career than just knowing laws. Law is a big umbrella over many subject areas. There’s law related to any kind of discipline you can probably imagine: environmental law and global warming issues (such as entire island countries disappearing because of rising seas: what legally happens to these people who aren’t responsible for the disaster happening to them? Or desertification of areas and displaced peoples), patents, cross-border litigation and arbitration, the arts and entertainment (provenance of art work, contracts for Beyonce, etc.), copyright and intellectual property, gender issues, immigration, real estate, you name it. People attend law school in the US who are already engineers, physicians, chemist, Chinese or Italian scholars–or combinations of the above. They also attend directly after a BA.
If you want to do law in the US, get a BA in whatever interests you and then work in a law firm–but not as a lawyer. You can start in undergrad volunteering for public interest law-related organizations, such as government agencies, prisoner legal services, foreclosure volunteer attorney organizations, environmental advocacy, gender-rights advocacy, reproductive rights advocacy, child advocacy, health advocacy (AIDS or Hep B for example) or work as a paralegal for a law firm, etc.
If you show 1) excellent undergraduate grades (A average); 2) score in the 98th-99th percentile for your LSAT; and 3) show a track record of work in the sort of law that you’d like to eventually do, you will have a better chance of getting into a top law school. Starting salaries of corporate attorneys in NYC directly out of law school start at $160K currently. Top law schools place above 90% of graduates in law-related jobs. Public interest starts from about $40-70K, sometimes higher. A top law school will also have loan forgiveness for PI law careers.