The following is an
electronic version of a booklet prepared by the Baylor University School of
Law. I think you may find the suggestions helpful. Please accept the usual
legal disclaimer. I am not endorsing any particular law school by providing you
with this material.
Dr. Ayo Ogundele
Pre-Law Advisor
Do I Want To Be A Lawyer?
This is a difficult question to answer. Some people
claim that they knew they wanted to be a lawyer since they were quite young,
but most struggled with this decision up until the time they applied to law
school. In fact, many law students and even recent graduates are still unsure
of the answer to this question.
While it is impossible to know for certain the
answer to the question "Do I Want To Be A Lawyer?" before entering
law school, there is some value in talking with practicing lawyers, attending
criminal and civil trials, attending law school classes or even working as a
messenger at a law firm. The value of these activities is in gaining some
insight into what a lawyer does; however, it will be somewhat of a superficial
view of the legal profession, highlighting the excitement and overlooking the
real complexity, difficult and demands of the job. Television shows dealing
with lawyers have perfected this superficial view of the legal profession.
One's decision-making process can also be skewed by
the difficulty of defining what a lawyer does on a day-to-day basis. There is
no "typical lawyer." The legal profession today has embraced
specialization to a significant extent. There are differences in workload,
client contact, work environment, compensation and overall quality of life,
depending upon whether one specializes in criminal law, family law, personal
injury or defective product litigation, trust and estate law, business
transactions and litigation, tax law, employment or labor law, environmental
law, patent and trademark law, civil rights litigation, or in other specialized
areas. There are many "professions" within the profession of law.
The only meaningful way of determining whether you
may want to be a lawyer is to look at the type of skills that a person must
develop and ultimately become proficient at in order to be a competent lawyer
in any area. Even though there are significant differences in the various
practice areas of law, the essential skills required of any lawyer are very
much the same.
Ask yourself the following
questions:
1. Do
I enjoy working closely with people
regarding significant events or issues affecting their lives?
The practice of law is a "people
business." Lawyers do not work merely on "cases" or research
interesting legal issues. A lawyer makes a living by helping people who have
come for aid and advice regarding personal, criminal, social, or business
related problems. Necessarily, a client already has concluded that he or she
cannot solve the problem on his or her own. The client knows it will be
necessary to divulge very personal or private facts to a lawyer. Personal and
confidential relations are created. The client most often will not perceive the
problem as merely "ordinary," but as a personal or business crisis. A
lawyer must enjoy working with people and must derive specific satisfaction
from helping people work through difficult, threatening, and significant events
in their lives.
2. Can I empathize with a client's situation, yet have the
ability to objectively analyze the issues and their consequences in light of
the existing law.?
The main task of a lawyer is to solve a clients
problem. People come to a lawyer for help in solving their problems. A lawyer
must be able to empathize in order to properly understand the needs and
concerns of his or her client, but a lawyer must develop objective, analytical
skills to identify the potential legal issues that must be addressed and then
to formulate a plan to reach a result that is consistent the desires of the
client as well as the requirements of the law.
3. Do I enjoy educating or
teaching a person about a subject about which he
or she may be ignorant or have significant misconceptions?
We live in a very complex society which has required
the development of very farreaching, technical laws. Understandably, most
clients are either wholly uninformed about the existing law or have significant
misunderstandings of what the law prohibits or requires. A lawyer must be able
to educate competently his or her clients. This teaching task is complicated by
the fact that the "student" has a direct interest in the subject
area. The degree of comprehension will be affected by the client's vested
interest in the subject area, an unwillingness to hear the bad news, a strong
disagreement about the goals of the law, etc. The need to educate is critical,
though, so that a client can make an informed choice -about how to proceed.
Tact is required in telling a prospective client that his or her view of the
applicable rules is wrong.
4. Am I able to articulate in a clear and concise manner my analysis of a problem to others, whether it be verbally or in writing?
Two vital skills of a lawyer are the ability to
speak and write in a clear, articulate manner. Since a lawyer's job is to solve
problems, the key to success is the ability to convince others of the
correctness of one's
analysis of the factual problem, the requirements of the law, and the best
result that can be reached for all concerned parties. A lawyer must be able to
educate and convince his or her clients, other lawyers, juries, judges or
mediators. He or she must have the ability to perform this task equally well by
speaking or writing. One may be a genius, but it will be to no avail if others
can not understand what he or she is saying. The skill and art of verbal
communication is an important key to success of becoming a competent lawyer.
5. Do I enjoy being an advocate? Can I argue both sides of the question with enthusiasm?
A lawyers personal satisfaction must come from
helping others achieve a desired result or avoid or ameliorate the consequences
of a
difficult situation. A lawyer must provide the client with sufficient
information concerning all possible alternatives to allow the client to make an
informed decision. Ultimately, the client must decide what is best for himself
or herself. The lawyer must be able to accept and advance the clients decision,
even if he
or she would not have personally chosen the particular course of action,
so long as the attorney stays within the ethical parameters of the
Code of Professional Responsibility. Whether one is writing a will, negotiating
a contract, litigating a lawsuit, or settling a divorce, a lawyer is advocating
the personal needs, desires, and goals of the client. One need not be
flamboyant or overreaching to be an excellent lawyer, only capable of
persuasively articulating concrete positions.
6. Do I like detail work? Do
I enjoy searching for the facts of a situation?
The practice of law is a jungle filled with pockets of quicksand
for the sloppy, lazy lawyer. The law has made great strides in eliminating
unnecessary requirements of form to allow cases to be resolved on the merits
rather than by one's ability or failure to follow rules of procedure.
However, rules of form, practice and procedure are necessary for the orderly
conduct of business within the law. A lawyer must pay strict attention to facts
and detail, for detail work is a significant aspect of the practice of law.
7. Do I like to read and
study?
A lawyer never stops reading the law. From the day
one enters law school until the last day before retirement a lawyer must keep
abreast of the ever-changing law. Whether it be statutes, agency rules and
regulations, or court decisions, a lawyer may never assume the law remains
static. Each and every competent lawyer must dedicate a significant number of
hours on a regular basis to educating himself or herself. This study time may
be added on top of the many hours spent in the law library completing legal research on very
specific issues of law pertaining to particular cases.
Conclusion
How many questions did you answer "yes"? Did
you enthusiastically say "yes" or were you thinking, "if I have
to do it, I will?" To be a competent lawyer, it is not necessary that you
have all of these skills now nor that you have presently developed them to a
high degree. You will have plenty of time to do that Utilizing these types of
skills on a weekly, daily or hourly basis is, however, the "life" of
a lawyer.
Television dramas portraying attorneys are correct
on one point. The practice of law is exciting, meaningful, and rewarding. You
will have the ability to beneficially and significantly affect the lives of
many people throughout your career. You will be exposed to a variety of people,
events, and areas of knowledge that you might not otherwise have experienced
within the confines of your own personal life. The practice of law is a
broadening and educational experience. However, the practice of law is not for
the lethargic, the lazy or the clock watcher. It is an ongoing, never-ending,
demanding life experience. As is true in any area of life, whether you are in medicine, science, education or in law,
your attitude towards life and your work is all important. In simple words, you
should be one who truly enjoys learning and who strives to do all that you can
with your work.
How Do I Prepare for Law
School?
A. Introduction
As you may have concluded from the discussion about
what it is like to be a lawyer, the well-prepared student is one who is
well-rounded, broadly educated, and mature. Lawyers deal with clients from all
segments of society regarding almost any potential significant personal, social
or business problem that could arise in everyday life. Thus, a prospective
applicant who has not yet completed his or her undergraduate work should
consider this in planning a course of study. For example, a well planned
liberal arts education, in which the student has intentionally attempted to
gain the broadest knowledge possible while concurrently focusing on a chosen
major of study is an ideal preparation for law school and law practice. Law
curricula are designed based on the assumption that the student has no specific
knowledge of the law. Law schools are seeking mature, well-rounded individuals
who demonstrate the aptitude to excel in legal analysis. All laws are a product
of our history, or governmental structure, our social, religious and political
norms and policies, and the past and present technological developments.
Therefore, a broadly educated person with an aptitude for critical thinking and
analysis is the best prepared student to appreciate and understand the function
of legal analysis, planning and advocacy in our society.
B. Undergraduate Curriculum
1. Choosing a Major and a
Degree Plan
No specific undergraduate major can be recommended.
In a very real sense, there is no such thing as a "pre-law" major.
Your decision regarding a major should be based on personal desires and needs.
One approach is to select a major that would prepare you for an occupation
other than the law. You can pursue an alternative career in this manner and
simultaneously be "preparing" for law school. This will allow you the
option of foregoing a legal education for whatever reason, or will allow you to
pursue an alternative career for a few years before entering law school in
order to gain experience and maturity. For example, it is not uncommon for
students to choose a major in accounting, finance, economics, or business, with
the intention of working for a few years before applying to law school.
Another approach is to select a major in one of the
subject areas recommended by most law schools as an area in which students
should take at least one course sometime during their undergraduate education.
Those subject areas include literature, history, political science, logic,
philosophy, language, psychology, sociology, economics and accounting. A
background in history and political science is necessary because our laws are a
product of our culture, our history and our governmental structure. Psychology
and sociology give a student an understanding of human interaction on an
individual and social basis. Economics and accounting may be helpful due to a
large number of law courses that deal with business transactions. Logic,
philosophy, and even math and natural science courses will all train a student
in analytical thinking, the core skill of a competent lawyer. Language
education recognizes the globalization of our world in recent years.
None of these subject areas are "required"
for entrance to law school. A lack of knowledge or skill in any of these areas,
however, may impede your ability to excel as a law student or lawyer. Thus,
choosing any one of these areas for your major will be beneficial in law
school.
The most important aspects of choosing a major are
that (a) you choose it, not someone else and (b) you enjoy the discipline and
believe that you can excel in this area academically. Why? A very important
criteria for admission to law school is one's GPA. If you select a major based
on what someone else wants you to do, there is a high likelihood that you will
be unhappy, and your grades will reflect that dissatisfaction. Never choose a
major based on the ease of attaining high grades, but realistically it makes
that that you likely will not excel if you have no interest in the subject
area.
2. The Ability to Write and
Speak
It should be evidence from this discussion that an
undergraduate student is encouraged to develop his or her verbal and written
skills. Rigorous courses in English grammar and persuasive writing are
encouraged highly. A course in journalism would be helpful. One should also
seek out courses that require essay exams and term or research papers. Law
School grades frequently will be based solely on one's performance on one essay
exam or a research paper. The inability to write coherently under the time
pressure demands of an essay exam will bode ill for success in law school.
A lawyer must also be able to speak articulately and
persuasively in the presence of one person or a small group of persons and also
before a large audience. You can develop these skills by participating in
extracurricular activities. Deliberate and knowledgeable training can be
achieved by electing to take speech courses in the areas of public and
persuasive speaking. Participating on debate teams is an excellent way to
develop your skills, although certainly not a necessity. The key is to seek out
any opportunity to refine your ability to speak, for it is a skill that is
improved by repetition.
3. Extracurricular
Activities
An integral aspect of a well-rounded person is your
involvement in social, religious, and service activities within the community.
A total focus on academics will result in a onedimensional personality that
will be incapable of working with clients who are so often facing crisis
situations. You develop common sense by working with people from various
ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds in diverse settings within the
community. You are encouraged to become a meaningful participant in, and
contributor to, the community.
Extracurricular activities, however, are just one
aspect of a person's life. Over involvement in this area may result in a
deficiency in another aspect of one's development. Too much time spent in
extracurricular activities, no matter how meaningful,
will not make up for or be an
excuse for inadequate grades. A
balance is necessary to maintain proper development
Admission to
Law School
I . Selecting a
Law School and the Law School Admission Test
There is no need to think about admission to law
school during your freshman and sophomore years. Study hard, become involved in
university and community life and enjoy the social activities of college life.
In one's junior year, a prospective applicant should commence his or her
research to determine which law schools may potentially fulfill one's needs in
light of reputation, curriculum, size, faculty
availability and cost. Prelaw societies, pre-law advisors, and other faculty
can be a good source of information. Visiting law schools also can be a
valuable resource as well as attending any major law fairs at your school or
within the community.
You must also plan to sit for the LSAT exam. A
person should not take the exam until the completion of three academic years of
college. The exam is designed for students at that stage of their academic
career. You can not study for the exam because it is an aptitude test. However,
there are study courses available to aid you in understanding the testing
techniques and to allow you to become familiar with the type of questions
presented during the exam. Contact your pre-law advisor for references to study
books and professional organizations that may be helpful to you in preparing
for the exam.
DO NOT TAKE THE LSAT FOR
PRACTICE. All
scores will be reported to every law school to which you apply for admission.
Most schools average your scores. Plan to take the LSAT only once. Old LSAT
exams are available. You can take a practice exam on your own or through your
pre-law society, but never take the real exam to practice.
Most applicants will have at least 2 choices, if not
more, of various law schools around the nation that are willing to accept them
for admission. It is truly a very difficult decision in choosing the
"right" school. One major factor is cost. Lawyers are well-paid, but
most young lawyers begin at a modest salary in the 30-50 thousand dollar range.
How quickly and how high one's salary climbs is largely dependent upon the type
of law one practices, the size of the community where one works and the size of
the law firm. Before committing to borrow 25 to 100 thousand dollars for law
school, one should sit down and seriously consider the degree of difficulty one
will face in paying back loans and whether other factors come into play such
as: (1) other educational debts, (2) other sources of payment from parents,
grandparents, or a spouse, etc., and (3) existing or future family expenses, if
any. Lawyers are paid very well, but that conclusion is based on a lifetime
view, not necessarily on what one will earn the first ten years of his or her
professional life. One has a choice in this regard for the cost of legal
education varies widely across the
nation and per school.
Another significant factor is the reputation of the
law school. The "old" rule of thumb before we became such a mobile
society was to go to the "best" law school that one could get into in
the state where he or she wanted to practice. Now, due to our mobility, one
should apply that rule to the place one believes they will live for the first
three to five years after graduating from law school. Next, what is "the
best" law school? There are no simple answers. Here are some questions one
can ask: (1) What portion of a law school's graduates practice in the state
where one wants to live? (2) What type of firms do they work for? (3) What do
judges and lawyers who are graduates of other schools think about the school's
reputation? (4) How active are the graduates in the state bar association? (5)
What percentage of the judges in the state graduated from the law school?, (6)
Based on the quality of students attending a particular school, what are the
chances of one graduating in the top 25% of one's class? and (7) What is the
school's bar exam passage rate and what percentage of its graduates are
employed within six months of graduation?
Another rule of thumb is that lawyers tend to
"hire their own" and then "the best" graduates of other law
schools. Is the school one is contemplating attending have a lot of graduates
working in the state where one wants to practice? If not, does one think that
he or she can graduate in the top 25% of the school one wishes to attend so
that practicing lawyers will consider him or her as part of the "cream of
the crop"? Finally, does the law school's degree have a reputation of
graduating students who have received a quality legal education?
Another element of the equation is that one must
consider that law school will probably be the most rigorous educational
training that he or she will ever experience. The last thing one should do is
voluntarily choose to be in an environment that
presents additional challenges to one's success. Therefore, ask questions
such as: (1) Do I thrive in either a small school or large school atmosphere?
(2) Do I need contact with professors or can I succeed with the mere help of my
fellow students in a study group? (3) Do I need guidance as to how to plan my
legal education or do I wish to choose my own courses throughout my educational
career? (4) Do I want a school that merely teaches the theoretical view of the
law or do I want a school to also teach its hands-on application to real life
scenarios?, and (5) Do I mind dealing with big-city issues of security, traffic
jams, etc., or do I need a small-town atmosphere where daily life challenges
are at a minimum? The point: go visit the law school, talk to the students and
professors, and read about the law school curriculum so you can choose an
environment that will at a minimum be a neutral factor or at best, one that
will allow one to thrive in his or her academic studies. The school and the
city where it is located will be one's home for three years and how well one
succeeds during this time will affect one's career for a lifetime.
Finally ... BEWARE! There is one final factor that
causes applicants to be misled about choosing a law school that unfortunately
has been created by the law schools themselves! Twenty years ago, all law
students graduated with a JD that signified that they had completed a liberal
arts education in the law. Today, many law schools advertise that they offer
"specializations" so that one can graduate with a "label"
that signifies that one concentrated in a certain area of the law. Many
applicants construe these specializations as ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY in order to
practice in certain areas after graduation or that they are necessary to get a
job with a firm in this particular area. THIS PERCEPTION IS ABSOLUTELY
FALSE!!!!!
When one graduates, he or she is highly skilled in the
law, but one is still a ROOKIE! One becomes a specialist by concentrating one's
practice in a certain area or areas after one graduates and ultimately becoming
board-certified in an area if one's state bar recognizes such specialties. All
these law-school specializations do is give one an added exposure to certain
areas of the law. Because of that, Baylor Law School refuses to call them
specializations and uses the label "concentration." The key is that
one can practice in any area of the law after one graduates and passes the bar.
This concentration merely gives one a little more knowledge than the next
lawyer that did not complete that course of study.
Therefore, the specializations or concentrations
that a law school offers should justifiably be A factor in the choice of a law
school, but not THE ONLY FACTOR! Who knows if one will actually enjoy this area
of the law? Who knows if any jobs in this area will be available when one
graduates? Most importantly, law school is the one time in one's career that he
or she will have an opportunity to study the full breadth of the law. One will
be too busy when he or she is in practice. Don't "waste" this
opportunity by putting on blinders and focusing to such a degree that one
misses the opportunity to see the "forest" of law that exists because
one spent his or her whole education studying the details of the leaves of one
particular "legal tree." Good Luck in your choice!
2. Admission Criteria
There are no set criteria that all law schools
follow in selecting students for admission. However, most law schools attempt
to make selections based, in part on objective criteria. The two most common
criteria are an applicants LSAT and GPA. The common approach is to utilize a
formula that combines the two scores to allow for preliminary comparisons of
different applicants. For example, Baylor Law School uses the following
formula: (10 x GPA) + LSAT score = Index number.
As you can see, this formula considers one's general
aptitude as evaluated by the LSAT and your aptitude and work ethics as
demonstrated by your GPA. In your undergraduate years, you can increase your
likelihood of admission by working diligently to maintain the highest GPA that is reasonably possible,
while also maintaining an overall balanced life.
Also, hard work in your studies logically will
impact your performance on the LSAT. Extracurricular activities, work
experience, letters of reference, and other criteria may impact a law school's
admission decision, but the predominate factors are LSAT score(s) and GPA.
D. Conclusion
The practice of law is a very exciting and rewarding
profession. The skills you need to prepare for law are those skills also needed
to prepare for a full and meaningful life. Your goal is to become a
well-educated person who has developed a common sense attitude by your
involvement and commitment to the community, state, nation and world.
For more information contact:
Office of Admissions
Baylor Law School
P. 0. Box 97288
Waco, Texas 72798
Telephone: 800.Baylor.U
Email: Law Support@Baylor.edu
Website:
law.baylor.edu