While many people start college without knowing what their ultimate career goals are, there are quite a few people who graduate from high school knowing exactly what they want to pursue once they enter university. If these goals are lofty and require a lot of additional education, like can happen with degrees in medicine or law, you may be unsure exactly what path to start out on. So to help you stay ahead of the game, here are three ways you can begin to prepare to be a lawyer while you’re still just an undergrad.
Build The Skills You’ll Need
Being a successful lawyer will require you to be able to wear many different hats. Luckily, college is a great place for you to get some experience doing many of the things that lawyers do on a daily basis within their careers. Knowing you’ll have to be versed in things other than just the law, Shawn P. O’Connor, a contributor to U.S. News and World Report, recommends that you take courses and participate in activities that will help you build the skills you’ll need as a lawyer. This could include taking English classes, public speaking, learning to research, critical thinking, and much more.
Balance The Risk Of Certain Classes For Your GPA
To get into a good law school, you’ll want to ensure that you have a high GPA throughout the entirety of your undergrad work. However, this doesn’t mean that you should only be taking classes that you assume will help to pad your GPA. According to Alison Monahan, a contributor to The Balance, you should try to strike a balance between challenging yourself while still keeping your grades up. Many law schools will give more advanced classes more weight when considering someone’s overall academic performance, so don’t shy away from those more difficult classes simply because you think you might not pass each exam with flying colors. It may be more worth it to take that risk than to not.
Develop Relationships With Your Professors
Apart from striving to do well with your academics and extracurriculars, you should also work to create meaningful and lasting relationships with your professors. College Express shares that to get into grad school or law school, you’ll likely need letters of recommendation from faculty at your school. But if you don’t know any of the faculty well enough to ask them to write a quality letter of recommendation for you, you may struggle with the application process. Additionally, having a stronger relationship with professors can help you get more out of both class and office hours with those professors.
If you’d like to end up in law school one day, consider how planning for this while still doing your undergrad could be beneficial to you.