From my understanding to go to law school, you need a bachelor’s degree, then if you are accepted, it is three more years in law school?
Will just any bachelor’s degree do? He has some hours toward an Engineering degree, but I would think he would need to back up and get something relating to law. I’m sure it depends on whether he wants Harvard School of Law, or Yosemite Law and Bait Shop? Ideas?
Also, what can a man graduating law school in his later 30s, almost 40 expect? No opportunities, be laughed at, or would he be able to swing it? Any thoughts appreciated…
I don’t believe there are any specific pre-requisites for law school as there are for med school. My husband, an English major, was considering it. My roommate majored in philosophy and is a lawyer now. I also worked with a man who got a law degree in his forties and his original degree was in medicine. (He didn’t intend to practice, though, he used it in relation to his job as head of the Institutional Review Board for a research center.)
My gf got into a first tier law school with a BS in Math, I think they’re more concerned with your grades and the quality of your undergrad school then what you actually got a degree in(also if you want to practice patent law, you actually need a hard science BS degree). Though if your friend doesn’t already have a degree, it probably makes sense to study something relavant to what he wants to do.
I love it, and I do quite well. I’m not the oldest fulltime student I know (she is in her 40s, and has 3 kids), but I’m definitely on the “older” side of law students in my class. Law is a common second career, so being nontraditional isn’t even all that nontraditional.
My undergraduate degree is in Anthropology, with a minor in Theater. I find both quite useful from time to time. The closest I got to law prior to starting law school was high school moot court! I had no trouble adjusting and never felt that I was behind other students in understanding. We have all sorts at school, but some of the most sucessful students have BAs in philosophy. Don’t worry about having to “back up” – the law is a way of thinking about a problem, even more so than it is a body of knowledge. Plus, from what I’ve heard, undergraduate pre-law classes are pretty useless. They are usually either too general or too specific.
Engineering backgrounds can be a HUGE asset (a requirement really) if you are interested in patent law. Its a bit early for that of course, but it keeps an option open.
I have an academic scholarship to a third-tier law school (although it is the top school in the 3rd tier, #104). It covers 75% of tuition. I accepted that over a spot at a tier 2 (top 100) school and have no regrets about doing so. I bust my ass and have good grades, and have had no trouble getting summer jobs (being older & experienced in the professional world has been an asset in every interview I’ve had).
I absolutely love law school. Basically I would recommend it, if you excel at:
being logical
summarizing
reading fast for comprehension
comparing sameness and difference
dealing with pressure that never ever ever ends.
budgeting time
writing
seeing the strengths and weaknesses of an argument
Good luck!
edited to add: re: the so called crappy pay for lawyers alluded to in the link… in my previous career I was in marketing and worked myself into a chronic injury it both arms, all for $34k/year. $60K is almost double, and maybe I wouldn’t want to shoot myself each morning from the sheer drudgery of each day.
Anecdote. A college friend of mine originally got a B.A. in English. He went to law school for a semester or so afterward, then decided he couldn’t hack it and became a carpenter. In his mid 40s he went back to school, got his law degree, and now has a job as a lawyer for a government department in Washington. I believe he had several different possible jobs to choose from.
Good link. I would also highly, highly recommend Patrick Schiltz’s “On Being a Happy, Healthy and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession” It’s a lengthy read, but I would point to this as the closest thing that exists to what should be required reading before applying to law school. If I had to summarize it, I’d say it explains that the ever-increasing pressure for big firms to offer enormous starting salaries has turned many of them into sweatshop environments that *can *destroy your personal life and scruples, unless you take care to keep that from happening. But that would only scratch the surface - your friend should absolutely read this article to get a good idea of some of the problems that you face in going to law school, and entering the legal profession.
I don’t want to scare you, though - I love law school (mostly), and I expect to enjoy being a lawyer. (Specifically, a public-interest or government lawyer). As other posters have stated, your friend’s age will not be a problem at all, and his undergraduate degree doesn’t matter. Some of the best students I know are in their thirties, and another has an engineering degree.
Three years if studying full-time. I did my law degree part-time, so it took me five and a half years. I already had a degree in economics, although it’s not necessary here to have an undergraduate degree. You can start studying law straight out of high school, usually in a combined Arts/Law, Economcis/Law, Science/Law type degree.
But just to be clear, in the US, where the OP is, an undergraduate degree is required unless there are extremely unusual extenuating circumstances. A Juris Doctor (what you get when you graduate law school) is widely considered to tbe the equivalent of a Masters (although there are separate 1-year legal masters, called an LLM). In the US, an undergraduate degree in a “legal” major contributes nothing to your qualification to practice law (it might be enough to become a paralegal, depending on where you live). Fulltime, law school takes three years.
It’s the same here in Canada–you generally need a bachelor’s degree first. There are exceptions and many schools list “easier-looking” requirements; but in practical terms, those seem to apply very rarely. It means we get the worst of both worlds: a Bachelor’s degree is required for entry (like the US), but all we get at the vast majority of Canadian schools is an LL.B (like the Commonwealth). Oh well.
Hi, jtgain. I’m mid-40s and a third-year law student.
If what I see from my classmates is any indication, any bachelor’s degree will do. One of the brightest students in my year (Dean’s List every year so far) is a woman who has an engineering degree. There are plenty of other non-traditional-for-law-school degrees floating around our school. The feeling seems to be that if you can apply yourself enough in your undergrad study to earn any degree and can do so with grades that are high enough to meet the law school admission requirements, then you’ll be fine at law school.
As for opportunities later, I don’t see a problem there. Oh, I have a feeling that some places won’t be interested in me: I had a career before law school so “molding” a fresh graduate who has only ever been to school into the firm’s image would probably be easier in certain firms’ eyes than teaching an old dog new tricks. But nobody is laughing; I am proving that I can do this, and my life experience has turned out to be a strong point in my studies. Yes, I’d say he could swing it.
In the UK, the basic professional law degree is a bachelor’s degree (LL.B.), and the basic professional medical degree is a bachelor’s degree (M.B.) Let’s call them first entry degrees. Neither of them are equivalent to Ph.D.s, which usually require a lot more scholarly research and a defence of an original thesis. In the USA, the same basic professional law and medical degrees are usually second entry degrees, entered into only after completing a first degree in some subject or other. That is why in the USA, the basic professional degrees are J.D. and M.D. rather than the UK equivalent of LL.B. and M.B. Note, however, that although in the USA the professional degrees are not first entry degrees, they are still just the junior degrees in their fields, as opposed to masters degrees or doctorates. A person with an American J.D. or M.D. may chose to take advanced degrees in his or her field at the masters or doctoral level beyond the basic J.D. or M.D.
Toronto has had the J.D. since 2001 (U. of T. LL.B. grads can trade in their old LL.B., two box tops, and one thin dime, for a shiny new J.D.). Last fall, Queens and U.B.C. voted to go over to J.D.s come this spring. Presently, at Western a student referendum recommended the switch, and the alum are being polled. The issue is up for discussion at Osgoode, Alberta, and Dalhousie. In the Land Down Under, Melbourne has recently made their program a second entry program and is awarding JD degrees.
I have had a long-standing bet with a friend in a Ph.D. program (biology) as to which of us will obtain a doctorate first. Since I am both too lazy and too dull to earn one honestly, my only chance to win the bet is a box-top exchange program, so I’m hoping that my university goes over to JDs.
Regarding your OP query, jtgain, I started law school in my mid-30s, and I have no regrets. In fact, it’s a blast.
My son-in-law is in the third year of a four year program. I believe he will be 37 when he graduates. His undergrad degree is in History. His wife (and my daughter), the smart and lovely Queen Bruin, may go to law school after she graduates this year. Her degree will be in Classical Civilization.
I knew about U of Toronto, but had no idea what the others were doing. I can tell you that in informal coffee shop discussions, whether U of Alberta ought to go to the JD is a popular topic. Maybe I should just say “I’m getting a law degree,” and leave it at that. Seriously, thanks for the info.
Patent law is one of (if not the most) marketable specialties in law. Depending on the schools and grades he has, a patent lawyer will be hunted done by firms and corporations looking to pay him wheelbarrows full of money.
The pay is good and there is a very significant avenue for working directly for companies as apposed to law firms. This in my limited experience greatly reduces the relatively insane pressure to bill hours.
Nobody else has mentioned it, but you have to take the admissions test (LSAT), and that will play a part in each school determning whether or not to let him attend. And the real biggie is the bar exam, given at the end of law school, which he’ll have to pass before being allowed to practice. Neither one is a gimme.
Good god, let the poor guy worry about the LSAT first! Sheesh.
And he WILL need to worry about the LSAT; it’s weighed a bit more heavily than GPA. My husband as my Mom mentioned above attends a 4 year program at a regional tier; he graduated summa cum laude from UCLA but tanked his LSAT on test day. Reverse the two, he’d probably be top tier. Go figure.
You have to register for the LSAT at the LSAC website, which also has handy little PDFs of statistics about every ABA-accredited law school. It will show, among many other things, the median GPA and LSAT for the most recent year of admits. I also scrutinize the bar passage rate and the employment rate.
Don’t scrutinize the employment rate too closely. That is among the easiest factors for schools to fudge. The conventional wisdom is that after the top 50 or so schools (and possibly well before that), you should choose a school based on the region you want to work in. At that point regional connections and reputation outweigh any overall status. There are a few exceptions to this, but it is generally a good rule in my limited opinion (which is based on working a bit in admissions and being a 2L).
