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So You Want to Be a Lawyer? Insights into Pre-Law Majors

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Your favorite shows are about lawyers passionately fighting for their clients about land zoning. Or, you have a relative who practices law and truly enjoys it. What if you want to be the one drafting the End User License Agreements you love to read every time you install new software into your laptop? How can you prepare to be a lawyer? Of course, you will need to attend law school.

 

Law school admissions in the United States typically require a strong undergraduate GPA, a Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) score, letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, and a personal statement.

 

How can you prepare? What should you study in college? Majors that help you sharpen and display your reading comprehension, logical reasoning, analytical reasoning, writing skills, and research skills are great preparation for the rigor of law school.

 

What Majors Should You Choose?

Political Science is likely the major that comes first to mind when you think about law school. Indeed, it is a very popular major for law school applicants. However, other majors will also give you rigorous experiences to prepare you for law school, such as History, English, Psychology, Philosophy, and Economics. Other popular majors include: Criminal Justice, Sociology, Journalism, Finance, and Public Policy. Lawyers-to-be can also be found studying the sciences: Biology, Chemistry, and Math. Your path ultimately depends on your specific needs. For example, if you wish to become a patent attorney, you will need to take a scientific or technical major before passing the patent bar.

Fun Fact: Meilin studied Math as an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz before going to Mithcell Hamline to study law. Read about her experience at  Mitchell Hamline here.

 

How to Test for Personal Fit?

The American Bar Association highlights certain strengths and skills important to developing a career in the law. Some seem quite obvious – such as problem-solving, critical reading, research skills, and excellent writing skills but more nuanced strengths they encourage you to consider are: listening, organization, and relationship-building. The ABA also encourages you to leverage a broad base of knowledge – human behavior, history, science, math, international and domestic politics – to develop competency in the profession.

 

Before Applying to Law Schools, Ask Yourself:

    • Am I a good listener?
    • Can I read dozens or hundreds of pages in a row – while closely analyzing each word?
    • Do I enjoy writing with extreme care and attention to detail?
    • Can I connect information across different domains of knowledge to figure out how to solve problems?

 

 

Written by Meilin Obinata

This article is written by Insight Senior College Admissions Counselor Meilin Obinata.

Meilin Obinata is a Senior College Counselor who enjoys learning from her students. She believes education is a creative endeavor and creates a space that allows students to explore new ideas. As a Bay Area native who grew up in Santa Cruz, she is familiar with the local schools. Read her full bio here.

Insight Alma Mater: Mitchell Hamline

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My decision to attend Mitchell Hamline School of Law (MH) in Saint Paul, Minnesota started out as just a marriage of convenience. When I applied, all I knew as a Bay Area native was that Minnesota was home to Jesse Ventura, who had made his way from working as a pro wrestler to being the governor. And I knew nothing about MH; I believe I first received contact from the school among others after taking the LSAT (Law School Admissions Test).  

 

Sorting through acceptances, I ultimately chose the one which made me the most generous offer, which happened to come from MH. They had offered me a full-tuition scholarship for all three years of law school and also awarded me funding for a position as a research assistant for a professor. I could not resist such a lure. Decision made, I packed my bags for a place I had never visited and did not know much about. It would change my life! 

 

Fall Color Insight Alma Mater Meilin

From the start, the faculty was very willing to share their wealth of knowledge when I would drop by during office hours. Sometimes you gain the most valuable insights by simply being in the presence of others who are wise. This sort of mentoring by osmosis is valuable beyond measure. Being able to observe a master of a craft was actually one of the biggest perks of working as a research assistant. Not only did I have the pleasure of seeing how a professor prepared for publication (and I saw my name in print within a footnote for the research I did, whoo-hoo!!!) this professor shared personal advice and anecdotes which have resonated throughout my life.  

 

By the way, law school involves infinite bouts of reading. As in, reading more than you might have ever imagined a human doing. And, as you may or may not know, law school classes are indeed conducted in the Socratic method; you sit in a classroom assembled around a podium as your professors alternately lecture and ask you questions about cases – you must answer based on your careful reading and analysis beforehand – to draw out your critical thinking. After the first year, I also had the opportunity to take courses which were smaller and more intimate.  

Insight Senior College Admissions Counselor Meilin shares her experience in Law School

 

Active as a leader for several clubs, I also had the benefit of relying on faculty as club advisors. My club advisors were generous enough act as sounding boards and even make introductions for me so that I could recruit attorneys for events and projects. I very much appreciate not only their academic roles as professors but being able to spend time to get to know them, one by one. Due to the positive reputation of the law school, when I made partnerships beyond campus, it was very easy to build connections to ultimately provide wonderful opportunities to my club members and the law school population as a whole, since my clubs’ activities and events attracted students and faculty. 

 

My fellow classmates were an energetic, lively bunch! Most of them were from the Midwest but there were plenty of students from the coasts also. Law school students occupied graduate school housing, which was right next to campus, and very close to the law school. This might not matter much if you are in a temperature climate, but, in the middle of cold, cold winters and torrential rains, every step matters. 

 

Law school is an explicitly professional training ground. I believe MH gave me excellent preparation to work in the legal profession. The law school offered practicums and clinics. As a student attorney, I represented the interests of children in the foster system, whose parents were facing the termination of parental rights. In my practicum, I worked as an intern in local government which ultimately led to a job offer upon graduation. 

 

Personally speaking, I have made use of my MH education in my work life and as a volunteer for various good causes. MH gave me the opportunity to directly immerse myself into a new professional universe. For that, I am forever grateful.  

 

P.S. Disclaimer: meeting famous people is not a sufficient reason to attend law school but…eventually, I shook Jesse Ventura’s hand at a campus event!  

 

Written by Meilin Obinata

This article is written by Insight Senior College Admissions Counselor Meilin Obinata.

Meilin Obinata is a Senior College Counselor who enjoys learning from her students. She believes education is a creative endeavor and creates a space that allows students to explore new ideas. As a Bay Area native who grew up in Santa Cruz, she is familiar with the local schools. Read her full bio here.