Law school can be an extremely demanding academic experience that is both financially and psychologically taxing.
Law school can help you build networks at clinics, expand your worldview and prepare you for a lucrative postgraduate career path. Furthermore, law schools are an opportunity to find purpose in work and find satisfaction through lawful activities.
Location
Location can have a significant effect on how much you enjoy law school. It’s hard to thrive in an unpleasant place, and given all of its time commitments it’s essential that your choice will meet with satisfaction.
Many students must choose a law school located near their desired practice location, and large cities tend to offer more employment opportunities and access to more law firms that may help students find the ideal match for their careers. It may be easier for you to connect with employers in specific fields by attending law school in that region, such as Boston’s tech corridor or New York’s financial firms; though ultimately your career options may be more limited without attending one of the more renowned national-ranking schools.
Specializations
Many law schools offer programs in specific areas of law. These concentrations, commonly referred to as specializations, can add value and often lead to higher salaries as experts in those particular fields emerge from school.
Selecting the ideal concentration can be daunting and should not be done hastily. Building an appropriate school list and considering future career goals will make your decision simpler.
Students interested in environmental law may wish to select schools with strong programs in this area, which offer courses, clinics and externships in this field. Students can gain hands-on experience in this area before making their decision about it as a viable career option. In contrast, government or public sector jobs typically require taking additional specialized courses like administrative law and Native American law before working within those fields.
Extracurriculars
Most top tier law schools offer various student organizations that require substantial time commitments from students. Sports teams require weekly practices; competition teams or journals necessitate extensive research; journal articles require lengthy writing sessions and may necessitate peer review; while moot court provides a great platform to sharpen argumentation skills and brief writing abilities.
Extracurricular activities give admissions officers insight into your personality outside of the classroom, telling your story and showing that you are well-rounded individual who can manage multiple responsibilities and excel in multiple aspects of life. To best represent yourself as an applicant for law school admissions committees see through any efforts to boost resumes for no other purpose than increasing chances. Consequently, don’t create organizations solely to increase chances of admission-admission committees will know this and may actually reduce them!
Career Opportunities
If your goal is to become a modern-day legal hero and an expert at legalese, law school may be for you. But law careers can also be daunting: long hours, fierce competition, and anxiety that could fuel a small country will all make this career choice daunting; once graduated it may take some time before your earnings allow you to start paying down student loans.
Alongside considering the daily details of law school life (debates, lectures and essays), students should also think through what career they want post-graduation and its effect on their salary-to-debt ratio. This consideration is especially crucial if one hopes to work in corporate environments or become in-house counsel; choosing the appropriate law school will help achieve these goals and personality tests can aid with this decision; personalities with perceiver traits tend to remain calm and rational in high pressure situations while placing internal values such as unity morality and ethics at the forefront of decision making processes.
