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Thinking About Law School

You should think carefully about attending law school. Law school is not easy - it requires tremendous academic effort and intense dedication.

If you think you want to be a lawyer, you should do some research.  Talk to one of NAU's prelaw advisors, interview attorneys you or your family members know or spend some time shadowing an attorney. Unlike the portrayal of attorneys in the media, most lawyers spend little time in courtrooms and most of their time doing legal research, preparing documents, interviewing people, and so on. 

If you are concerned that you may not want to practice law, but are interested in law school, be aware that many law school graduates do not practice law.  Instead, they work in business or government.

Careers in Law

Life as a lawyer is not what you see on television.  There are many things that a person can do with a law degree.  Here are just a few:

Private Practice 

• Litigation:  Litigators focus on dispute resolution.  Litigators can be generalists or can specialize in areas such as employment law, intellectual property, personal injury or criminal law.
• Transactional:  Transactional attorneys work with contracts, corporate formation, mergers and acquisitions, taxes, real estate, wills and trusts and many other topics.

Public Practice:  Attorneys in public practice typically work for the government or for a public agency.  The practice ranges from criminal prosecution or defense to managing deals.

Corporate Practice:  Commonly known as in-house counsel, corporate attorneys manage a broad range of issues.  Typically in-house attorneys start with a law firm.

Paralegal:  This position does not require a law degree, but does require specific training.  Paralegals work for law firms and do substantive legal work, including research and writing. 

Other opportunities occur less typically in areas such the FBI, education, management

Reading List

Law school requires A LOT of reading.  If you have not already done so, you need to integrate the habit of reading into your everyday life.  Expand your repertoire of reading genre: read poetry, biographies, history and philosophy.  In between the "hard" books squeeze in some light reading--mysteries, travel accounts, novels.  In short, be as well rounded a reader as possible. Below is a list of books popular among prelaw and law school students. In deciding whether or not law school is right for you, you might want to check them out.

• Law vs Life  by Walt Bachman
• The Devil's Advocate by Alan Dershowitz
• Planet Law School by Atticus Falcon
• The Young Lawyer's Jungle Book by Thane Messinger
• One L by Scott Turow
• Majoring in Law by Stephan Underhill.
• The Soul of the Law: Understanding Lawyers and the Law, by Benjamin Sells
• The Lure of the Law: Why People Become Lawyers and What the Profession Does to Them, by Richard W. Moll.
• Princeton Review (Click HERE for direct link)