5 Ways To Determine Whether Law School Is Right For You

Let’s face it, trying to decide upon a future career is not always an easy task.  Since law school is open to pre-law students of any major, many students give serious consideration to the idea.  However, they often don’t know whether law school and a future career as a lawyer are right for them.  Here are 5 easy thingsyou can do to help determine whether you and law school may make a good fit:

1.  Find out what lawyers do.  If you know some lawyers, spend a little time finding out exactly what they do.  Remember, though, the legal profession has a wide variety of different jobs that involve very different types of work.  So, try to talk to as many as you can – lawyers working in private law firms, government lawyers, in-house lawyers, solo practitioners, etc.  The more lawyers you speak to, and the more different opinions you can obtain, the more informed you will be.

2.  Watch a trial.  Trials are open to the public, free, and occur every single day in local courtrooms.  If you live locally in Orange County, feel free to contact me and I can give you some suggestions.  If you live elsewhere, do a little research and find a local courtroom that handles jury trials and go in one day and watch.

3.  Sit in on a law school class.  Once again, you can probably do that quite easily.  Check out your local law school’s class schedules and find a class or two that sounds interesting to you.  You probably should contact the professor ahead of time, either by email or by speaking to him/her before the class starts, but most professors would be happy to have you audit their class.

4.  Take a look at the LSAT.  There are plenty of ways to get free LSAT information.  If you would like more details, feel free to contact me.  Don’t worry about whether you know the answers or even know how to attack the problems – the LSAT tends to be a puzzling mystery at the beginning.  However, if the logical reasoning skills tested on the LSAT are intriguing to you, it may be a sign that you would enjoy the type of reasoning skills used in law school and the practice of law.

5.  Watch My Cousin Vinny.  It’s an old movie, but it’s a really good and funny one.  Although it’s a comedy, the movie’s handling of the law is well done and much better than the vast majority of TV shows and movies.  Whether you watch My Cousin Vinny or some other TV/movie about lawyers, just remember that Hollywood tends to glorify the practice to some extent.  Much of what you see may be accurate, but there is a lot more behind-the-scenes work in the legal profession than is shown on TV and the movies!