Computer Science or Economics bad prep for law school? Forum

[dailygrind]

Econ can actually go either way. It can be either math heavy or reading/writing heavy depending on your school and the way you set it up. These days, many schools have both a BA and a BS econ major with the BS requiring calc and basic accounting and stuff while the BA doesnt(although your course selection may be limited if you dont take calc). Personally, I took more math heavy classes than most people in the BA program and I only took about 3-4 somewhat math heavy courses. Even still, the only calc I really used was some profit maximization stuff using rates of change, taking derivatives for different things, and a few things regarding building better models in econometrics. Overall, I honestly dont even know how to do much calc anymore(not that I knew a huge amount in the first place). Of course, I didnt go to MIT or Caltech.

even if you do a whole bunch of math heavy stuff, then you're probably gonna come out with something that's heavy on econometrics, which means you're likely to be writing research papers. if you can write a research paper, you can write a legal paper. no grades yet to confirm my hypothesis, but i'm pretty confident nonetheless.

[Norwood]

Econ and CS won't hurt you in law school because of the writing, writing in law school is fairly straight forward and about getting to the point. You'll actually do bad if you try writing creatively.

As you realized by now, there is probably not one major that will completely or best prepare you for law school, it really just depends on the student. Take what you like and what you can excel at. Generally though, I do believe that Econ and CS would be a good prep for law school. Econ and CS do a lot to test your ability to analyze, reason, and use your common sense in solving difficult problems, which is what law school is all about. Again don't worry about the writing, you'll learn how to "write" in law school during 1L.