I am a rising senior about to apply to law schools. Right now I have narrowed down my legal interests to international business law and entertainment law. I know normally the golden rule is to go to highest ranked law school, but as entertainment law has specific powerhouses I am considering applying to schools mainly on program strength (UCLA over Duke for example).
I have always thought I'd pursue international law, but I have lately heard that most international law programs are not worth pursuing and that very few individuals ever practice true international law. I've heard that one's best shot at practicing international business is to become an expert on US law (rather than study "international law"? Is this true?
I've always been very interested in studying international business law (WTO, IP, free trade agreements, etc) but I'm not sure I'd want to pursue this if I had to focus almost exclusively on US business law. Would this be the case?
Thanks!
International Law Programs Worth It? Forum
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Abraham Lincoln Uni.
- Posts: 164
- Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:36 pm
Re: International Law Programs Worth It?
It's great that you're thinking seriously about what you want to do and where you want to be positioned. There are law schools that are known, due to faculty or other reasons, to have strengths over others for sure. However, a higher ranking can trump those considerations to a certain extent, because the prestige can possibly open more doors to a wider pool of high-prestige employers or more networking that helps you break into a certain career path (for example, bigger law firms as a trend will go to on-campus interview fairs at higher-ranked schools compared to lower-ranked schools, even if lower-ranked schools have their program strengths....if that's not important to you, that's fine, but it's something a lot of people don't consider when they are making the choice of law school up-front).
In general, it's smart to go where you have the best capacity to explore a broad range of areas. Most students enter law school thinking they know what area of law that they want to practice, but their thoughts change as they end up learning more about each area. There are all sorts of practical considerations that also come up that you may never have encountered before or during law school, where you are dealing with more academic exploration rather than job hunting. It's not really until you ask, shadow or work with attorneys that you get to see how the work is like for each practice area and get to see how each attorneys progress in their career paths to head to where they are currently.
International law is not easy to pursue in the sense that there is not the same number of employers/clients that demand international law specifically compared to other legal services. However, like anything, if you really want to do it, then find the connections out there that will help you explore it seriously. It's best to ask the attorneys with the jobs that you want to have how they planned their paths----it can involve a lot of out-of-law-school networking and interning, depending on the area.
For any area where there are not many open positions, competition can come down to you having a language skill, a solid networking connection or if you do public interest, steady resume-building to demonstrate your public interest commitment, but if you are not dedicated to prioritizing having these, the job hunt can be harder, practically speaking.
If you're very serious, the best places to check on how to pursue and really find positions will be talking to professors or attorneys who do what you want to do and ask them to connect you to opportunities to build up your career path. However, if you feel like you're going to want a job that is more readily available, then expect that while you can be interested in international law academically, you may need to be able to tweak your interests to include practice areas that are more in demand where you want to practice law geographically. Don't be discouraged though---exploring what you seriously want to do is worth it in the long term; even if you want to change later, it will save time if you push and figure out what it is like quickly, rather than investing time not really exploring it and then finding out later it's not like what you expected.
In general, it's smart to go where you have the best capacity to explore a broad range of areas. Most students enter law school thinking they know what area of law that they want to practice, but their thoughts change as they end up learning more about each area. There are all sorts of practical considerations that also come up that you may never have encountered before or during law school, where you are dealing with more academic exploration rather than job hunting. It's not really until you ask, shadow or work with attorneys that you get to see how the work is like for each practice area and get to see how each attorneys progress in their career paths to head to where they are currently.
International law is not easy to pursue in the sense that there is not the same number of employers/clients that demand international law specifically compared to other legal services. However, like anything, if you really want to do it, then find the connections out there that will help you explore it seriously. It's best to ask the attorneys with the jobs that you want to have how they planned their paths----it can involve a lot of out-of-law-school networking and interning, depending on the area.
For any area where there are not many open positions, competition can come down to you having a language skill, a solid networking connection or if you do public interest, steady resume-building to demonstrate your public interest commitment, but if you are not dedicated to prioritizing having these, the job hunt can be harder, practically speaking.
If you're very serious, the best places to check on how to pursue and really find positions will be talking to professors or attorneys who do what you want to do and ask them to connect you to opportunities to build up your career path. However, if you feel like you're going to want a job that is more readily available, then expect that while you can be interested in international law academically, you may need to be able to tweak your interests to include practice areas that are more in demand where you want to practice law geographically. Don't be discouraged though---exploring what you seriously want to do is worth it in the long term; even if you want to change later, it will save time if you push and figure out what it is like quickly, rather than investing time not really exploring it and then finding out later it's not like what you expected.
