JD Health Law focus vs. MPP?

HappyAlumnus
Wed, 19 Jul 2017 00:05:24 +0000

Go to law school if you want to be a lawyer. Don’t go to law school if you don’t want to be a lawyer.

One course of action could be to go to law school and take a few healthcare law classes (which may help getting jobs in the sector right out of law school, but won’t be particularly helpful in a career), get a job practicing healthcare law and then ending up doing some type of healthcare advocacy in a few years, but remember that “life happens as we’re making plans” so if your goal is to work in healthcare advocacy, go straight for it; otherwise, you have a high chance of ending up doing something else, since career changes depend only in part on what you, the jobseeker, want. The number of law students and pre-law students who end up doing as a career what they plan to do during or before law school is about zero.

If you want to do healthcare advocacy, I’d guess an MPP or maybe something from a school of public health would probably be better than a JD.