Get Informed and have a Sense of Purpose
Should I go to law school?
This is the single most important and difficult question every pre-law student should address. It is important to not wait until you are in law school to figure out the answer. By then, you will likely have taken on an enormous amount of debt that will take a very long time to pay off. The time to figure out if law school is right for you is now, before you apply or at least before you pay tuition. Some students are able to figure it out while they are still undergraduates, but many others are not able to decide until after going out and getting real-world professional work experience after graduation. Still others find pursuing a graduate (e.g., M.A.) degree is a fruitful and affordable way to buy themselves time to figure out if law school makes sense for them. But, for most students, law school is simply too expensive to “find yourself” while there.
Professor Perry Binder (Robinson College of Business / Legal Studies), published a short article in Huffington Post entitled “10 Tips for Picking a Career Path in College.” This is a worthwhile read for any student deciding whether to pursue a law career.
There are really three separate questions that you must answer in order to know whether law school makes sense for you:
- Do I actually want to be a lawyer?
- Do I have (or can I develop) what it takes to be a successful lawyer?
- Would law school be a good financial investment for me?
In order to adequately address these questions, you need to get informed about the realities of the legal profession and, probably more importantly, you need to learn more about yourself–your passions, interests, values, strengths and weaknesses. (It was with good reason that the ancient Greeks considered “Know thyself” to be the wisest of maxims.)
Know Thyself? How to find out if a law career is right for you
To find out if you want to be a lawyer, the best thing you can do is to learn as much as you can about the realities of the legal profession and gain experiences conducting as many different law-related tasks as possible. (This can also help with yet another question you should answer before sending out law school applications: “What kind of law do I want to practice?”) How will you learn these things and gain these experiences? Here are four things you can (and should) begin doing as early as possible–preferably during your freshman year–to discover if you will actually like being a lawyer and if you have (or can develop) the talents and abilities necessary for excelling as a lawyer:
- Try to meet and listen to as many different practicing attorneys as you can. A great vehicle for doing this is to join the GroupMe for CASA Pre-Law. Another great way is to join one of the pre-law student organizations that regularly bring in lawyers and judges to give guest talks. Several student organizations in particular do this on a regular basis:
It is quite possible to be a part of more than one of these groups at the same time, so make sure to check out every group that is of interest to you. To learn about other advantages to joining these and other student organizations, see their websites.
Getting involved with one or more pre-law student groups on campus can help you meet some or all of following objectives:
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- Learn more about the legal profession so that you can decide if you really want to be a lawyer.
- Discover the specific areas of law that interest you most.
- Engage in law-related leadership activities to put on your resume (which you will send to law schools when you apply).
- Develop skills that will help you excel in law school and/or as a lawyer.
- Connect with other pre-law students to share strategies, resources, information and opportunities.
- Demonstrate your character strengths to professors outside of the classroom so that they can write stronger letters of recommendation for you when you apply for internships, jobs, and/or law school.
- Try to get an internship in a law office or court. These opportunities are often scarce and highly sought-after; thus, you have to be aggressive about finding out about them and applying. The best way to find out about them is to be connected to pre-law community on campus. To do this, it helps (once again) to join the GroupMe for CASA Pre-Law, to be active in a pre-law student organization including those listed above, to take pre-law courses, and to get to know faculty members familiar with pre-law advising including the Pre-Law CASA Faculty Associate, Clinical Associate Professor Michael B. Shapiro ([email protected]), and Graduate Assistant and GSU College of Law Student Bentley Spain ([email protected]).
- Take law-related courses to gauge how well you will do, and how much you will enjoy, the sorts of courses you will take in law school. The “Get Prepared” page in this sub-section lists departments on campus that offer pre-law courses. The links on that page will take you to listings of pre-law courses offered by those departments.
- Join GSU’s Mock Trial Team to get extensive experience litigating realistic cases.
For more advice on discovering whether law school makes sense for you, check out the article entitled “Is Law School for You?” (https://www.top-law-schools.com/prelaw1.html) published by https://www.top-law-schools.com/.