- Thu Jul 25, 2013 5:07 pm
#10094
Hi cacoolee,
Law school is meant to be difficult, particularly in the first year, as you note. But difficult does not mean insurmountable, just that if you proceed, you'll need to work hard, and may need to really change your study and work habits. For instance, many students who've gotten used to skimming reading assignments in high school and college find that they need to re-learn how to really read carefully and closely, in order to understand legal cases which involve a lot of complicated questions and legal reasoning. You might try taking a look at a few "judicial opinions" (what a judge writes up describing his or her decision about a case) on the web to get a sense. You might also look at the reading comprehension section of the Law School Admissions Test, which similarly, will be very hard to both understand and answer questions about, if you don't read closely and with attention to detail.
Relative to the question of what you can do with a law degree, criminal law is actually a relatively smaller part of the legal profession. If you want to be a criminal lawyer, you would start by taking classes after the first year in areas like criminal procedure, possibly prison law, and it's certainly helpful to have a "Federal Courts" class. In your summers, you might seek an internship with someone who specializes in criminal defense, or through the local district attorney's office. Or you might seek an internship in a criminal court, for instance doing research for a judge in the criminal justice system. The two tracks most people pursue after law school are either prosecution or defense. For the former, you'd be applying to work as an assistant district attorney. For the latter, you could start by working as a public defender, for a city or county, or by getting a job at a law firm that specializes in criminal defense.
To figure out sooner if you're really interested in criminal law, I would do something similar -- look for a summer position, or a semester internship, working with a public interest law firm for instance, that represents people in the criminal justice system.
Other areas of law you might practice in: Torts (including but not limited to medical malpractice, personal injury, product liability (for instance, when corporations sell defective or dangerous items), and other civil law suits where one person or entity has harmed another), Property (for instance, real estate), Contracts, Wills and Trusts, Employment Discrimination and other areas of Civil Rights, Family Law (anything from child custody to divorce), Workers Rights and Labor Law, Disability Law, International Human Rights, International Trade and Customs, and various areas of Corporate and Tax Law. There are other options as well, though these are all fairly common specialties.
Good luck!
Beth
