No matter what your major, you may decide to apply for admission to law school. The accrediting agencies for law schools say that there is no single-track pre-law curriculum. Instead, these agencies urge pre-law students to pursue a broad liberal education as undergraduates. This may be either through the humanities, social sciences or natural sciences, or through undergraduate professional degrees, such as business, provided that core curriculum requirements are used, whenever possible, to broaden one’s preparation. The critical point is that you should choose your major because of your interest in an academic field, an interest that can sustain you through your undergraduate education. TCU’s Pre-Law Advisement Program will work with you individually to select courses of study that will match your particular interests and help prepare you for law school. It should also be noted that the decision to enter law school is a important one, and one that not all prospective pre-law students will ultimately choose. The pre-law advisors at TCU believe that the career decision not to attend law school, but instead pursue other professional and personal goals, is also a positive outcome of your undergraduate education. In part, this explains why it is important for students to choose undergraduate majors because of academic interest and not as a strategic way to secure admission to law school.
- Your degree plan will be developed with your academic advisor in your major, supplemented with recommendations by pre-law advisors. Many law professors complain that their entering students do not write as well as they ought, so you should pay special attention to your preparation in English composition. Public presentation skills also are important. In general, a legal education requires excellent skills with verbal abstract reasoning, particularly with the analysis of complex texts.
- Pre-law advisors will help you plan when to take the LSAT and advise you concerning the various preparation courses. Formal preparation courses for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) are strongly encouraged. Pre-law advisors will also advise you concerning the application process, especially the personal statement, resume and letters of recommendation that are required by most law schools.
- Becoming involved with the Pre-Law Advisement Program gives you the opportunity to meet with representatives of law schools and with practicing attorneys who will describe their forms of law practice.
- For most students who apply to law school it is not a question of whether any law school will admit them, it is a question of which school is most appropriate, given students’ undergraduate GPAs and LSAT scores. The top law schools are extremely competitive. However, in most states there are law schools that will admit students with undergraduate GPAs at or near 3.0 and LSAT scores at or near the 50th percentile.
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