Prospective Law Grads, Tips for Choosing Major

The best advice you can ever receive on this topic is as follows: Don’t go pre-law! You are better off majoring in art history or communications than taking on a pre-law major. Statistically, pre-law students score lower on the LSAT than almost any major. Moreover, if you decide you don’t want to practice law, then you are basically SOL. So just don’t do it.

Study What You Like

First and foremost, it’s important to study something you’re interested in. There are a plethora of studies showing a positive correlation between student satisfaction of study and GPA. If you like what you’re doing, you will most likely climb to the top of the class. But, there are some majors that are better suited for law school admission purposes, and perhaps future career options after Law School.

Consider the Sciences

Those majors are in the sciences. Although lawyers typically gravitate towards the humanities, a degree in science will no doubt set you aside from the application pool. What’s more, a science degree naturally gets a GPA boost by the admissions committee. Lastly, in order to practice patent law you have to have a certain amount of credits in the hard sciences. Patent law is a very lucrative field of law. So if you love physics or chemistry, and think that law might be right for you, then you should consider majoring in the subject or something similar. It may behoove you to minor in a subject that builds your verbal skills like philosophy or English, but it is by no means necessary.

Hidden Gem

A sleeper pick for law school hopefuls is studying classics (Greek and Latin). Statically, students with this major score the highest on the LSAT. Other notable mentions in the top ten are: English, Chemistry, Math, Engineering, and Philosophy— off the top of my head. Studying Greek and Latin will force you to pay extreme attention to detail while building your verbal skills immensely. Ambitious law school hopefuls might consider a double major in a hard science and the classics.