<p>This just my opinion about the advantages and disadvantages of these popular field of studies that often lead to application of law schools.</p>
<p>Pre-Law</p>
<p>advantages: Gives you a sample of what you’ll be studying in Grad. School.</p>
<p>disadvantages: Looked down upon by graduate schools, doesn’t give you any extra skillsets once you become a lawyer, if you’re not admitted into Law school- YOU ARE ****ED with a useless diploma. </p>
<p>Economics</p>
<p>advantages: The best college program to prepare you for the LSAT, a solid understanding of why we need lawyers.</p>
<p>disadvantages: Does not give you a relevant skill that applies to the duties of a lawyer.</p>
<p>Criminology </p>
<p>advantages: Gives you a rich source of knowledge that can be easily applied to your job as a lawyer.</p>
<p>disadvantages: Poorly prepares you for the LSAT.</p>
<p>Psychology</p>
<p>advantages: Gives you a nice tool which will boost your Law career.</p>
<p>disadvantages: Not a lot of undergrad majors are taken with this. </p>
<p>Personally, I think majoring in Criminology and minoring in Psychology is the best idea for Law School because then you can be an awesome lawyer.[prosecuting will be mad easy with your criminology knowledge and their motives can be easily described with your psychology knowledge.]</p>
<p>A search on CC or elsewhere on the internet might turn up more recent data.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as a “pre-law” major.</p>
<p>You mentioned that a disadvantage of an Econ major is that it doesn’t give you a relevant skill that applies to the duties of a lawyer, There is a whole school of legal thinking that is influenced by economic models of decision-making. Also, Econ is relevant for many areas of law. Courses in Labor Econ, Industrial Organization, Environmental Econ, Money & Babking, International Econ, etc. all relate to important areas of the law.</p>
<p>An undergrad psychology major is not going to give you great insights in someone’s motives. Especially at the undergrad level. Some areas of psychological research are more readily applicable, e.g., eyewitness testimony, jury selection, etc. </p>
<p>Lesrning to think and write clearly are your best preparation.</p>
<p>why do econ majors do so well on the lsat though? most econ courses–at least the ones i’ve taken–don’t have extensive reading (outside textbooks) or writing. maybe i’m missing something. i’m not trying to put down econ majors btw. i’m thinking about doubling it with business but questioning it’s marginal benefit in regards to lsat preparation.</p>
<p>OP, you seem to have a really narrow definition of a lawyer if you’re saying a criminology major and psych minor would be the most useful for law. That would be relevant for litigation maybe, but there are many legal specialties where other concentrations would be more useful (a science or engineering major for patent law, for example).</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure a lot of what economics teaches can be used as a lawyer, especially if you plan on continuing into biglaw where you need to have some knowledge of finance and economics.</p>
<p>Anyways, I think almost any major other than basket-weaving will be perfectly acceptable to apply to law school. I’m majoring in economics and philosophy and definitely think that both will help with my LSAT, in law school and as a lawyer.</p>
<p>Don’t mistake correlation for causation. I doubt that choosing one major over another will change your LSAT score. It may well change your GPA a bit, which could have a bigger impact on your law school admission chances than a 2.4 difference on the LSAT (the difference between number 2, philosophy, and number 8, history).</p>
<p>This has everything to do with the correlation between one’s major and one’s academic ability than it does with gaining a boost from one major over another. For example, the best universities don’t offer pre-law or criminology; thus, the best students aren’t pre-law or criminology majors.</p>
<p>Physics/Math, Philosophy, and Economics/Math are all heavily logic based. If you’re in a maths-heavy program, most likely you’re going to be required to take a formal reasoning course (sentential logic for philosophy and quantitative reasoning/proofs for math). Being able to use this knowledge is paramount in the LSAT.</p>
<p>“Sorry to dig up old topics, but I was also wondering why Econ majors do so well on the LSAT.”</p>
<p>Because econ is usually the most popular, or one of the most, major at most top schools (HYP, Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, Duke, etc.). Therefore, it’s not that econ prepares students for the LSAT, but smart students major in econ.</p>
<p>No way, one, an easy major looks bad and even if it doesn’t it will fail miserably to prepare you for what you face and you will fall flat on your face when you have to do actual work. I quote my criminal law professor, “Irresponsibility has a price – and once again, a lot of you are paying it, or at any rate are paying it in my sections. Perhaps ‘irresponsibility’ is too severe; after all, most people need to be taught how to teach themselves, just as they need to be taught how to write and think, and if you weren’t taught it before you came here, perhaps the blame rests more with your past teachers than with you. But wherever the blame lies, if you haven’t learned by now, you must take the consequences.” Short change your education at your own peril.</p>