WWTBAM Bored

So I needed to take Son1111 back to school since he was home for a few days on break and there was a bye week for football. Gave us a chance to chat about stuff.

His major is Criminal Justice and he no longer thinks he wants to be a cop. Thinking about options and one of the ones he is thinking about is law school. Well, those of you who have known me a long time know that there were times when the concept of him graduating high school was questionable. To say he has turned that around is an understatement.

I know more about med school and the time involved than law school. And since we have a few Bored Lawyers I thought I would ask you guys what the process is. I know that at the end you have to pass the bar in the state you want to practice but is it just 4 years? Other options to consider like paralegal?

Thanks for any thoughts/info you can share.

I did tell him that now that he is a junior that he should try to make sure that the courses he is taking are ones that expose him to the possible areas of interest so he can find out what would bore him or excite him.

Organic chemistry and I did not get along well.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I wanted to be one at one time. Law school is three years, and he would need a good grade average to get in (but his major is not important). He would also have to take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT).

And because he is young, being a paralegal might be an option. He would probably just need a degree to get his foot in the door. (I was 51 when I got my paralegal certificate and no law firm would even consider me, but I digress.)

Getting into a law school isn't necessarily that tough, especially in Texas, where we have 10 (UT, Baylor, SMU, St. Mary's, South Texas, Tech, Houston, A&M (formerly Wesleyan), UNT (new), and Texas Southern). A reasonable GPA and LSAT score will get him in somewhere.

The program is 3 years full-time. Then the Bar Exam. The Bar varies in difficulty depending on the state. Texas actually has one of the easiest, although it has gotten a little tougher since I took it 18 years ago.

I loved my time in Law School. I do not, however, recommend it to anyone who hasn't spent some time around real lawyers seeing what real lawyers actually do. I think too many people think it's going to be like Law & Order or The Practice.

christie1111 wrote:So I needed to take Son1111 back to school since he was home for a few days on break and there was a bye week for football. Gave us a chance to chat about stuff.

His major is Criminal Justice and he no longer thinks he wants to be a cop. Thinking about options and one of the ones he is thinking about is law school. Well, those of you who have known me a long time know that there were times when the concept of him graduating high school was questionable. To say he has turned that around is an understatement.

I know more about med school and the time involved than law school. And since we have a few Bored Lawyers I thought I would ask you guys what the process is. I know that at the end you have to pass the bar in the state you want to practice but is it just 4 years? Other options to consider like paralegal?

Thanks for any thoughts/info you can share.

I did tell him that now that he is a junior that he should try to make sure that the courses he is taking are ones that expose him to the possible areas of interest so he can find out what would bore him or excite him.

Organic chemistry and I did not get along well.

Law school is three years. Getting into some law school is not that tough. However, the trick then is to get a job after law school. Particularly if the market happens to be tough when he gets out, getting into a well regarded law school makes it much easier to get a job afterward. Many of the big (i.e., high-paying) firms won't even consider candidates other than from top-tier schools.

If he ends up not going to a top-tier school, then his job prospects will be much brighter if he finishes at or near the top of his class. I don't mean top quarter. I'm not even sure the top 10% would be good enough. I'm talking about the one or two or five people at the very top of the class.

Law school is quite expensive, particularly at private schools, so he should be prepared to shoulder a lot of debt after he graduates. --Bob

Wishing Evan good luck in whatever decision he makes.

And, yeah, it is pretty remarkable. I remember you fretting over him.
Good for him!

I'm currently in law school now (1L) if you have any questions, you can PM me. Yes, it's 3 years. It's not that hard to get into law school in general, but you want to try to get into one that's well regarded/ranked as the top employers naturally go to the top ranked schools first. In order to do that, you need a good GPA and LSAT score, but I would push the LSAT score as more important since GPA can be easier to explain away if there was an extenuating issue during his undergrad that affected his school work.

Also another big reason to have a decent LSAT is because the school will use that along with other factors to determine how much scholarship money to give your son when offering admission (it's possible, but difficult to receive additional scholarship money once you enter law school).

I think one of the major factors when considering law school is considering why he wants to be a lawyer and what field he wants to go in. Yes, the job market is tough (some fields being tougher than others). The career services office where I go to school is responding by making all 1L's attend weekly seminar on preparing to search for jobs when the time comes. We've done seminars from networking to drafting a resume to mock interviews.


Example: My undergrad was in finance (and I didn't want to become a banker), so I want to use my undergrad experience with my law degree to go into financial or banking law; which seems a lot of my fellow peers are not interested in. With that, I'm hoping that translates to better job prospects by specializing in that field. I actually passed the test to become an Assistant National Bank Examiner with the OCC while considering law school, but decided I'd rather try to work for them as an attorney instead as I am very interested in the law.

I will only say what I say to all my physics students who announce a desire to go to law school: take a good look at patent law. Because it requires some knowledge of hard science, it scares many likely lawyers away, because that is not usually one of their strengths. So the job prospects are generally better. That and environmental law are two growth fields, or were, the last time I checked. In each, a solid undergrad background in science is desirable.

mrkelley23 wrote:I will only say what I say to all my physics students who announce a desire to go to law school: take a good look at patent law. Because it requires some knowledge of hard science, it scares many likely lawyers away, because that is not usually one of their strengths. So the job prospects are generally better. That and environmental law are two growth fields, or were, the last time I checked. In each, a solid undergrad background in science is desirable.

SteelersFan's hunting buddy from Dallas will second this. Along with some help from scholarships, he put two kids through top schools in their fields, one in engineering, one in medicine, before he retired from patent law about a year ago to take up writing (no success yet). He's a great guy, very interested in many fields, great background in science, archeology, history. Anyway, he'll tell you that his science background was key to many of his successes.