Find the school that’s a good fit for your child. Top law schools really care about GPA and LSAT. That alone will get you accepted into at top law school right out of college with no work experience.
If you want your child to go into Big Law you should aim for Columbia or NYU as their employment rates are the highest for this. (Someone pls correct me if my data is old.) Those schools want to see GPAs at or near 4.0 and they want to see LSAT above 172. It’s not that they necessarily set the bar at that level. Some people get in with lower stats, but it’s that there are so many other people applying to these schools with those kinds of stats that for your child to be competitive, he or she will need similar or better stats. Your child as an undergrad should major in anything at all, from theater and studio art to engineering and or chemistry; nursing or prehealth; labor; econmics; gender studies; sports; art history; area studies and languages, because there’s a type of law that relates to any and all of those fields.
Before you decide for your child that he or she will go into Big Law, I strongly caution you. The work is brutal. And often quite boring. Most people feel that they “made a mistake” by going that route. Young attorneys work writing contracts and briefs usually from templates that already exist, reading the same boring stuff over and over and altering them slightly. Every word is important so you need to focus on boring stuff for hours and hours straight every day. Closings for deals take days in a row, and go 24 hours, in closed rooms, filled with fumes from copying machines. The firms go 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. Boring, unfulfilling for most people, and brutal hours. This is why some people do a stint in Big Law–to pay off their debt and to get really great work experience–and then jump off of that ship for quieter, more interesting waters at lower pay. If your child is a girl, then add to that the fact that having a child is hard to fit into those hours–there is a big difference between a woman and a man still in this world in terms of hours he or she can fit in to get on and stay on the Partner Track.
Other forms of law don’t make that much money. Law is bimodal, with one big group making about $60K-$70K. The other group making about $160-$180K at least at first and then either figuring out how to make those hours work into their lives or by leaving and going to less-paying jobs.
Your child should try out that kind of work before deciding by getting a position after college as a paralegal in a Big Law Firm. Any top LAC will provide means to do this. They are as respected as top universities and have connections to Big Law too. Your child may want to “show interest” in law during college by interning for law-related places like Prisoner’s Legal Service or a small law firm where he or she can see various types of law work. But that’s not necessary if he or she has alumni relations to a Big Law firm.