What's the best major for law school? Forum

[triplevkid]

???

[pdennis1000]

I'd be curious to see statistics of UG majors of attending law students. I know some of the law schools show simplified stats for this.

I double majored in history and humanities which sounds fluffy but at my UG school history majors were required to write a thesis. The only other folks who had to were honors college students (sucked for them if they were an honors college student studying history). Even my friends at the fancy private schools said "you have to write a thesis? daaaaaaaamn."

[orangeswarm]

What's the best major for law school?

Something that can get you a job in case you decide, during your 4 years of UG, that law school isn't for you!

[escobarsonlam]

^ as always, that guy knows what he's talking about. i know the answer seems funny or looks like a joke but damn if he isn't right.

[sarahs5]

i've heard that there's no one specific major that is preferred among law schools. however, i think english majors probably fare the best on the lsat and in law school because of the massive amounts of reading and writing required. i hope it's true that major doesn't matter because i'm an anthro major.

[ihatelaw]

not true. of the humanities/social sciences econ majors and philosophy majors score highest on the lsat. not necessarily faring best but id say about the closest we can come to make an objective statement is by looking at lsat scores.

[paulie]

i think econ majors definitely have an advantage when it comes to logic games on the LSAT, at least - when i first started studying them they seemed strikingly similar to a number of the problem sets i've had to do.

[MTal]

Study from Southern Illinois University correlating success in law school and earnings as a lawyer with undergraduate majors. The study found that...

"The evidence indicated that lawyers with undergraduate training in economics tend to earn more than other lawyers, ceteris paribus. Those who obtain an undergraduate degree in economics earned approximately 12.7 percent more than others, on average, and this was the only undergraduate field associated with earnings that differ significantly".

http://www.siu.edu/~econ/documents/econlawyers.pdf


Course, the study *was* done by a bunch of Econ prof's, so you never know with these things.

[ihatelaw]

that also might have more to do with career choice. how many econ majors do you know who end up working public interest?

[johnyk]

english literature is the best prep in my opinion

[johnyk]

sbrown83 what music school did you go to ??? I majored in Music (Piano) too

i graduated from The Eastman School of Music in Rochester

[Demosthenes]

I think as long as you're able to use critical thinking as a vital part of your major, you'll be fine.

[finalnight]

a rigourous econ program isn't a bad idea, or you can do poli sci like my brother, not attend half your classes, spend your time studying for the lsat and get into nyu with a 3.6 gpa

lol

[mok749]

Here's my experience:

Molecular biology: Helps considerably with reading comprehension. Trying to wrap your head around papers with tons of unfamiliar terms is just like the RC component. You have to learn the relationships between components that you don't understand.

Computing Science: Helps considerably with logic reasoning. Huge help with logic games. Essentially a major devoted to logic games, except that you have to construct solid logical proofs for your answers . You also get to write the IP bar, and have a good paying exit strategy.

Philosophy: Huge help with logic reasoning. Obvious reasons.

In my COMPLETELY UNBIASED opinion, computing science wins

[18488]

sbrown83 what music school did you go to ??? I majored in Music (Piano) too

greetings fellow pianist!

i went to CCM at the University of Cincinnati. Who did you study with at Eastman?

[TTtoilet]

Music major.

[readinmonotone]

hear hear, music majors!

[Grad_Student]

Philosophy

[SeekingHeight]

History. Dense reading, interpreting argumentation, and writing argumentation. It gets the job done, and I find it to be a lot more concrete than philosophy. That said, I did combine my history studies with a good deal of philosophy courses (e.g., symbolic logic).

[Harvey Dent]

philosophy. intro to logic alone will cover everything you need to know for LG and then some. you will regularly encounter reading passages that will be light years more complex and boring than anything you'll encounter on RC or during the rest of your life:

The employment of the pure understanding then becomes dialectical. The second part of transcendental logic must therefore form a critique of this dialectical illusion, and is called transcendental dialectic, not as an art of producing such illusion dogmatically (an art unfortunately very commonly practised by metaphysical jugglers), but as a critique of understanding and reason in respect of their hyperphysical employment. It will expose the false, illu-sory character of those groundless pretensions, and in place of the high claims to discover and to extend knowledge merely by means of transcendental principles, it will substitute what is no more than a critical treatment of the pure understanding, for the guarding of it against sophistical illusion. Kant--Critique of Pure Reason


and pretty much every grade in philosophy courses is determined by either written papers or essay exams.

[JSandlin]

To whoever thinks that English and humanities/social science majors prepare you better for law school than engineering:

To say that engineering does not have a strong writing component is to completely miss the point of the education. Instead, not only does engineering require a large body of writing, but it also forces you to focus on writing papers that consistently prove and argue for your findings. This writing of a technical manner is most similar to that which you will be writing in law school, as writing in law school focuses less on creative and poetic writing but on logical writing. Not to say that humanities/social science majors are not difficult, just that the broad style of writing that they encompass is a little unnecessary.

Engineering causes you to do three things that will help you on the LSAT:

Read complicated and unfamiliar texts (RC section)
Develop problem solving skills (LG section)
Mathematically and logically prove things as truth (LR section)

Unfortunately, if you hate math and science like the majority does, choosing engineering will do you no good. This is just my humble, unbiased opinion.

[overcastagain]

I work for a engineering firm and we have two full time editors whose sole job is to correct and format the reports written by the engineers before they can be sent out to clients. Some of that is to standarize the report but there is a lot of correcting that is needed as well.

[mark.lee13]

I am a political science major but I am considering to switch my major into economics. Economics adviser made clear this would work out better for me while IN law school as well as law schools picking economics majors over political science majors. People are bias as was the adviser but I wanted more objective opinions. Should I switch to economics if it looks that much better?

[Ryuuza]

You should do what you want to do regardless of what looks better. You also have to consider the fact that if you go into a field that you hate, you are more likely to do poorly. And a lower gpa has more of a negative connotation than a oversaturated major.

[soulp]

If you want to go into corporate do economics. you'll do best that way. some of my colleagues have studies under other colleges and I excel beyond their knowledge of corporate law. from the corporate lawyers I met they have backgrounds in business or economics. economics all the way!