<p>Hi,
I have always wanted to be a lawyer, however my strongest interest is in science, specifically health. I know english, history, and philosophy make good pre-law majors.</p>
<p>But what would be a good pre-law major that would help me after I graduate from law school to be a litigator and specialize in tort law (specifically malpractice and personal injury from accidents an krap)</p>
<p>I know for patent attorneys they should have a undergraduate degree in engineering, but what about personal injury attorneys?</p>
<p>yep undergrad major doesn’t matter as long as you get a real good gpa. Law schools are pretty self contained, everything you need to learn about law you’ll learn in law school, so they are basically open to all majors. Find a major you enjoy and do real well in it. Reading comprehension ,close anyalsis, and logical writing are very important when it comes to law school and even preparing for the lsats. So if you major is reading and writing intensive and/or anayltic, it really helps to prepare you for the intense workload that law school entails. So for that reason people prefer philosophy, english, history, etc since they prepare you to read closely and write logically coherent and stuctured papers in which you consisely but precisely outline your arguments and main ideas. Again law schools could care less your major as long as you did well in it and did well in the lsats.</p>
<p>Tort law is not specialized enough for you to be able to specialize undergrad. For med mal, a nursing background is a plus - the nurse in my old law firm was the only person there who could read the medical records and she had some insider knowledge as to when things just didn’t look quite right. In negligence cases, you have to become an overnight expert based on the facts of particular case. At some point in my legal career, I knew all there was to know about roofing, automobile brakes, anesthesiology, leaking underground gas tanks, and how many kids have ever been burned by coffee at Shoneys - no way to prepare in undergrad for that.</p>
<p>I think a finance background would be more useful for a real estate or tax practice. Sometimes an undergraduate degree factors in later on. If you were to decide to go in house at some point, then a finance degree might be more useful then than for the law firm.</p>
<p>'Sure. It certainly doesn’t hurt. At the very least, you’d probably be more comfortable with the jargon going in, which would help a lot."</p>
<p>ditto.</p>
<p>for all that may matter, I was at a Wachtell cocktail reception recently – they expressed strong preference for those with backgrounds in investment banking.</p>
<p>Many large law firms have departments outside their general corporate practices that often are involved in large financings and there is much crossover. There is a general corporate group, where you will find the M&A(merger & acquisition) attorneys, and other groups involved in finance such as capital markets, project finance, private equity, financial restructuring, leveraged finance, securitization and structured finance. A background in finance will be helpful for much of this work, but it is not something that the firms necessarily recruit for in an entry level associate. It may play a bigger role in looking at a lateral move as an experience attorney.</p>