Does attending an Oxbridge master's program help when it comes to law school admissions? Forum

[turbotimo]

Hi all,

I did my undergraduate at Princeton and I'll be attending either Cambridge (have an offer) or Oxford (am still waiting to hear back) next year. I'll be doing a Classics/Ancient History master's program. I'd like to do the program for a number of reasons (e.g. I would really like to do more research in Classics; I want to keep the door open for a PhD in the field; etc.).

However, I'm also strongly considering law school. I was wondering if doing a master's at Oxbridge would help when it comes to law school admissions. I know the top law schools often split hairs when it comes to choosing one competitive applicant over another. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Many thanks!

[hdivschool]

Conventional wisdom is no, it does not help much if at all.

[cavalier1138]

Yeah, you don't get much of a boost from a doctorate, regardless of where you get it. If anything, it's possible that a doctorate in a specialized field like Classics would be a red flag for adcomms that you aren't actually interested in legal practice (in your case, that would appear to be the correct conclusion for the adcomm to draw). Obviously, some people with those advanced degrees do end up in law school, but it's not a normal pathway to legal practice.

[nixy]

I think the above is a little pessimistic (sorry, cav). Almost anyone who’s done anything different-career-like between undergrad and law school (by which I mean something that’s it’s own thing, not something like waiting tables or being a paralegal) has to make clear in their application why they want to make a change to law, but it’s not that hard to do so convincingly. I suppose academia’s a bit more complicated because the hiring situation is so dire, more people can’t get jobs in the field and turn to law as an alternative than in, say, engineering (you can feel confident that an engineer really wants to make a career change and hasn’t just been unable to find a job in their field). But I don’t think it’s a terrible red flag - it’s an easy enough concern to address in an application.

The master’s won’t have a lot of impact on your application, because law is unlike more purely academic fields and doesn’t care much about your expertise/background - your LSAT and GPA carry the most weight. The Oxbridge background looks good, and could advantage you against applicants with similar stats but no Oxbridge MA, but the benefit will be marginal.

I didn’t see your post as committing at all to doing a doctorate before law school, but as suggesting you’re considering a number of possible future paths, one which might be a doctorate and one which might be law school. I think doing the MA in such a situation is good (although UK academia isn’t entirely like the US), in that it will help you get a sense of whether academia is what you want to do and if it’s worth it. It doesn’t sound like you are, but don’t do it for any benefit in law school admissions (and don’t worry about the impact of a doctorate on law school admissions until that’s actually realistic).

[nealric]

Hi all,

I did my undergraduate at Princeton and I'll be attending either Cambridge (have an offer) or Oxford (am still waiting to hear back) next year. I'll be doing a Classics/Ancient History master's program. I'd like to do the program for a number of reasons (e.g. I would really like to do more research in Classics; I want to keep the door open for a PhD in the field; etc.).

However, I'm also strongly considering law school. I was wondering if doing a master's at Oxbridge would help when it comes to law school admissions. I know the top law schools often split hairs when it comes to choosing one competitive applicant over another. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Many thanks!

It's probably a fairly neutral factor, but probably not a bad credential if you are looking to go into academia. Law school admissions is mostly a numbers game, with "soft" factors like extra degrees only mattering at the margins.

To be fair, Yale and Stanford tend to be a bit more soft factor focused just by virtue of having their pick of applicants plus small class sizes, and I imagine someone of your academic background would be mostly interested in those two schools (especially if there's an academia bent). The main issue is you need to be able to articulate why you are going to law school. Classics is a bit tangential to law, but I'm sure there's an angle there.

[Wild Card]

No.

But it's a nice conversation piece because a lot of professors/partners/judges have degrees from there or studied abroad there, so it will help you get a better job than you might have gotten without it, open doors.

In that case, you should prefer Oxford to Cambridge, because the former is far more common than the latter.

IDK about the relative strength of their Latinist/Hellenist historians, but either way, you'd have the opportunity to work closely with a leading scholar and get a strong letter of rec if you want to do a Ph.D. in the States.

[crazywafflez]

As a golden triangle grad myself, I'll toss in my random internet advice.
The grad degree may help at the margins. It won't hurt, it won't help terribly though either.
I agree that this'll help with other soft factors though and will help in the job market.
Mine has helped me in interviews and job search etc.
Cambridge is absolutely fine. Oxford may be more popular but it isn't seen as any better and everybody knows that these are comparable, first class unis. Especially judges and profs.
If you can afford it, and you're interested, go for it. Just don't expect it to get you into Yale or something unless you've got the UGPA/LSAT scores needed.

[turbotimo]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the help! My intuition was that it might be a "soft" that helps on the margins and it sounds like a number of you concur. To someone who was wondering earlier, it's more of an either/or situation with law school and a PhD program.

My research will probably be focused on a topic adjacent to Roman law so I'm not too concerned about explaining how my interest in Classics and law school are related. Thank you all again!

[CanadianWolf]

Without seeing your entire law school application, my response is "no" a masters degree in classics from OxBridge will not help with law school admissions among T-6 law schools.

If your masters degree was in a different field that was in demand by biglaw, then my answer might be different.