Should you go to law school?

I think going to law school is the best decision I have ever made because I really enjoy my classes, I love moot court, and I've met some of my closest friends here. Even so, law school has been an expensive investment resulting in heavy law school loans. And if I did not enjoy the material, the 3 years in law school would have been really long.

So how do you know, without going through law school, that you would enjoy it? Here are a few ways of sampling legal work:

• Advocate: Try an internship or a club position that requires you to advocate for people. For instance, I worked in constituent services for a Senator that allowed me to interact with underprivileged clients, understand their circumstances, and advocate on their behalf with various US agencies. Various community service projects can also involve you advocating on behalf of underprivileged students or tenants with a school administration or landlord, respectively. Advocacy lets you sample various legal skills - like listening to your client, spotting issues with their applications, writing and speaking in persuasive manner with agencies, and understanding and organizing supporting documents.

• Debate: Try activities such as public speaking, debate, and mock trial in high school and college. Legal skills include being able to identify reasons for various rules, and persuading various parties - your client that your advice is sound, the opposing party that your client's case is strong or perspective in a transaction is the right one, or a judge or regulator that your client should receive a particular judgement. 

• Get legal experience: To get a better idea of how lawyers operate, I would recommend trying an internship or a paralegal position at a law firm. As a summer intern, I got a brief exposure to how litigation works - what happens in depositions, at the negotiation table, and at trials. However, my exposure was really cursory as a summer intern, as 2 months is a really short time, workload over the summer is generally light, and interns generally do not get to delve into real legal work. I worked for 2 years in the legal department of a company, and this experience proved a lot more realistic.

• Explore classes: Take a class on philosophy, political science, or economic theory. In law school, you learn rules by understanding the reasons for having such rules. As such, different theories about human nature and the role of society become important. Some schools also allow you to audit law school classes, particularly introductory constitutional law classes. Do take advantage of these.

• Research: Take a class that requires you to write a research paper, or conduct independent research with a professor. This experience will help you analyze data, research different authors, and accumulate the information with a new perspective of your own. Also, importantly, it will give you a glimpse into citations. Lastly, if you can get experience publishing a journal, magazine, or newspaper, even better. Law school and your legal career will require you to write analysis based on research - whether it's a memo to a client, brief to a judge, or analysis of a legislation/regulation. Research, citation, and analysis are valuable legal skills.

• Write a story: Try writing a fictional story or even start a personal journal, writing the same story from different people's points of view. A valuable skill in law school is reading the court's opinion and trying to decipher the facts of the case. The court may put a particular spin on the facts, and in class you try to think about what may have really happened. And as a lawyer, you will frequently have to present your client's story in the best light (as a litigator) or imagine your client's facts in the least favorable light so you can let you clients know about the risks with their transaction (as a transactional lawyer/advisor).

• Explore the LSAT: Study for the LSAT. The LSAT can be a pain because it requires you to do a lot of thinking in a very short amount of time, but it does test many of the skills that are built in law school - such as reading comprehension, analytical thinking, logic, and persuasive writing.

• Network: Talk to current lawyers and law school students. You can visit law schools you are interested in attending, and some students there may give you genuine feedback. Talking to lawyers in your family, friends, or alumni of your school will likely be most helpful.

Obviously you don't need to try all of these activities out, but most law school students have a mixed bag of experience in some of the above. These activities can both help you sample law school as well as persuade law school admissions officers that law school is the right place for you. And if you can show good results from the above activities, your resume becomes that much stronger for law school and legal jobs.