Tips on How to Decide if Law School is Right for You

Are you thinking about law school because you graduated college and still don’t know what to do? Do you want to be an attorney solely because you just LOVE Legally Blonde and Suits? Have you been thinking about law school for a while and just not 100% sure? It might be time to consider what you’ll actually get out of your law degree and whether putting in the money and effort is right for you. Here are a few tips on how to see if law school is the right choice.

The obvious tip for this is to think long and hard about what you want to do career-wise. You should consider if law school is the type of learning you’d enjoy. Do you like problem-solving, critical thinking, and finding creative solutions to issues? Do you like arguing and having to think on your feet? This is exactly what you’d encounter in law school and a legal career. What is it about a law degree that will prepare you for what you want to do as opposed to another grad program? Can you get a job in the area of interest without a law degree? Law school is a long, stressful, and costly journey. If you can accomplish what you want to do without it, I might just say that you should skip out on the J.D. However, if you do want to be in the legal advisor/attorney type of role, you will need the law degree and Bar exam for that.

Sit in on a law school class and chat with the law students. This is one of the best things you can do to help decide if law school is right for you. I got to sit-in on a law school class at UC Davis as a sophomore in undergrad and I am so glad I did. I got a good sense of what lecture was like. Getting a tour could also give you a good idea of what it would be like to attend law school. I would try to chat with as many law students as you can to learn as much as possible about law school life. Every student has a different story, background and reason why they came to law school. You might learn a thing or two from chatting with them, and maybe even come across someone who had the same hesitation as you prior to attending law school.

Is law school worth the cost? Law school is pricey, especially without any financial aid. UC Davis Law annual tuition is around $50,000/year and that’s for California residents (NOT factoring the price of textbooks and all of the other fees and costs). This is definitely a factor to consider more in-depth once you’re offered admission to law schools along with a financial aid/scholarship package, but still something to think about now as well. You likely won’t be able to work as a law student unless it’s a legal internship, but there are evening programs available at some law schools for students who want to work while attending school.

Try out a legal internship and see if you like it. If you’re able to, I would recommend trying to find a legal internship of some sort to see attorneys in action. I, for example, interned at a Public Defender’s office in undergrad. These are the attorneys representing people in court when they cannot afford to hire counsel. It was unpaid and I mainly just sorted case files, and I didn’t like criminal law much (in fact, this internship confirmed my non-interest in that area of law). However, it was still very educational to go into court and watch the public defenders and I was able to gain a lot of insight into an attorney’s work. As an undergrad, I know it may seem hard to find something legal to do for an internship as most places hire law students and not undergrads. I would suggest reaching out to the local city attorney, district attorney, and public defender’s offices. Government offices are your best best and some have unpaid, volunteer-based internships available for college students. I have tips on finding pre-law internships here.

Do information interview with attorneys. Information interviews were something I did not even know about until I got to law school. Basically, it’s a one-on-one meeting with a person in the field you’re interested in, where you ask them questions and learn more about what they do. The point of the interview is to gain more understanding about the field and what a career like theirs would entail. Although I didn’t know that was what it was called, I did plenty of informational interviews in college! I set up meetings with attorneys through my various internships and network connections to chat about how they got to their current job and what they do on a typical day. It really helped me learn more about what attorneys actually do in my area of interest (environmental law), and I got plenty of good advice from them. (I have a whole blog post on informational interview tips here.)

Read blog posts from law student and attorney bloggers. This isn’t just a shameless plug to get you to read more of my blog posts, haha. By reading more posts on law student academics and life, you’ll be able to get a better idea of what law school is like and if it sounds like something that interests you. You will probably also learn about different areas of law you didn’t even know existed! It’s easy to find law student blog posts through scrolling the ‘lawstudentblog’ hashtag on instagram or looking up law student posts on Pinterest.