Pre-Law School Work Experience - Does It Matter? Forum

[Voyager]

It's just a talking point. Working in a law firm prior to school will give you little to no boost over a similar student who worked at Chipotle.

Gotcha. So what does matter for landing one - grades and class rank I assume. What else?

In addition, how bad would it look if I remained unemployed until law school?

I disagree with the above advise. I think working in a professional setting is materially superior to working at Chipotle.

School name is most critical, then grades

Everything else is *almost* window dressing.

Good to know. Sounds like I should do something besides study for the LSAT, but I shouldn't stress about it, correct?

Reverse the order of grades and school. And aside from work experience, diversity and personality are both important factors in hiring. You can't do much about those, but having interesting pre-law background and experiences can contribute to personality/connecting with a professional.

Oh, I'd say a median Harvard Law student has hella more opportunities than top 10% at, say, Brooklyn Law.

And I'll add: the school name carries on for the rest of your career. My wife gets recruiter calls because of CLS alone. Recruiters call out the school, not her grades (which were good).

[patentlitigatrix]

This doesn't seem to apply to OP, and is a pretty specific situation. But if you have significant work experience as an engineer/scientist and want to do IP of some kind, work experience matters more than just being a talking point. How much I am sure varies based on firm and specific interviewer/hiring partner. But on a practical level, some of the skills gained in those jobs can be directly relevant to work done in the practice group.