Legal practice areas requiring UG coursework Forum

[RZ5646]

Besides patent law, are there any practice areas that require or strongly recommend a specific undergrad background? Like tax law needing an accounting or finance major for example? Or is basically everything open to liberal arts majors?

[hichvichwoh]

econ is kind of nice for antitrust, but is not in any way required

[despina]

For immigration law, it's extremely helpful to have at least oral proficiency in a foreign language, preferably Spanish but depending on where you want to practice, Chinese or Haitian Creole or Portuguese or Arabic etc can be great too.

This applies to family or removal defense -- for business immigration you can probably get away with being monolingual because the vast majority of your clients already speak English.

You don't need to major in the language, but if you're starting college without a second language, now would be the time to pick one up, and study abroad if possible.

Edited to add: this is also true, though perhaps to a lesser extent, of a lot of fields that require working with low-income clients, such as housing, criminal defense, etc. Depending on where you want to practice, you'll be a lot more marketable if you don't need an interpreter in the room to work with your clients.

[banjo]

econ is kind of nice for antitrust, but is not in any way required

Agreed. I've definitely seen antitrust positions suggesting a background in econ.

[wreek]

Hell, my undergraduate degrees were math and psychology. Psychology was useful as hell during trial and interrogations. I'm certain I won more cases by confusing and psyching people out than with any other tactic.