<p>I understand how there isn’t a Medical Major because there are still pre-requisites and those are very important. However, if you can major in Business undergrad or go for your MBA after graduating why don’t they give you the choice for Law too?</p>
<p>Prereqs aren’t the reason there is no “pre-med” major. There is no “pre-med” major because you can’t get a job in the medical field without technical training or a graduate degree. So you would land yourself with a useless bachelor’s degree if you found yourself unable to go to med school. It’s the same way with law. You wouldn’t be able to do anything with a “pre-law” bachelors degree since you need to go grad school to be a lawyer. </p>
<p>Business is different because there’s tons you can do with undergraduate business degrees.</p>
<p>I think the OP is asking why don’t they give people the option to got law school as an undergraduate and then become lawyer since there are no prerequisites/required knowledge?</p>
<p>More succinctly, why does a law degree have to be a grad degree?</p>
<p>Correct me if I’m wrong about your question.</p>
<p>I think most people don’t come out of high school with the ability(writing, critical thinking, etc.), experience, and maturity that are needed to succeed in law school.</p>
<p>There used to be undergraduate law degrees in the U.S. And there still are in other countries. But even then, you need more training before practicing law. Simply, you need education beyond the undergraduate level to practice law or medicine. Business just doesn’t warrant as much education. </p>
<p>BTW, you don’t go to graduate school to become a lawyer or medical doctor, you go to law school or medical school.</p>
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<p>Which are forms of graduate school…</p>
<p>So if someone wanted to get a law degree what should they get their undergrad degree in? Does it matter when applying to law school?</p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter. There are some that are viewed as less rigorous or with suspicion like a “pre-law” major, but they really don’t care for the most part just get a high GPA and LSAT.</p>
<p>^You can get your undergrad in anything and still become a lawyer. However, it is recommended not to pursue a degree in prelaw, premed, criminal justice, kinesiology, or anything else that isn’t viewed as “rigorous.”</p>
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No… they are professional schools. Graduate school is for Masters and PhDs and mainly centered around research. Professional degrees (MBA, MD, JD) is for degrees that help you become a professional.</p>
<p>from wikipedia
It’s just semantics, but a lot more goes in to a graduate degree than a professional degree. However, you tend to make more money with a professional degree than a graduate degree.</p>
<p>This brings up an interesting point as to why a degree to practice law couldn’t be offered as a vocational degree the same way accounting or nursing are. You’d still have to become licensed(pass the bar) in order to practice, but you have to do that for accounting and nursing as well. </p>
<p>It really begs the question if four years of undergrad are even needed to be a competent lawyer. Is the practice of law in the U.S. so vastly different that it could not be taught to undergrads like they do in Europe?</p>
<p>Can’t answer why there’s no Bachelor’s degree in law, other than it’s a meaningless degree.</p>
<p>The key issue though are the State Bar Associations, and to an even greater extent the lack of standardization in what they ask for individuals looking to sit for the Bar exam in their state. The requirements vary significantly and States may have specific requirements on the amount of undergraduate work that’s been completed, what law schools produce eligible candidates to sit for the bar exam and a number of other aspects of eligibility. Since the Bar Associations are the ones that decide if you get to practice as a lawyer, it’s kind of important to meet their requirements. </p>
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<p>I’m not sure I agree with that statement. While an advanced degree in anything is nothing to sneeze at, there are definitely areas which require a lot more than others and the dividing line isn’t as simple as grad vs professional. Certainly, to a large extent, it’s a matter of what your preferences are and what you’d classify as ‘difficult’…I’m sure there are a lot of PhD candidates who would despise the rigors of the clinical years of medical school, just like there are plenty of medical students who would hate the long hours of reading and making outlines required for Law school, just like there are plenty of future JD’s who couldn’t stand the thought of doing hours of observational field research in Sociology…</p>
<p>Yes, different strokes for different folks to be sure…except for MBA’s - that’s like freshman year of college all over again, except that multiple keggers and beer busts held each week are now “networking opportunities”. ;)</p>
<p>There is no undergrad law major because the practice of law cannot be taught in the classroom. Even in law school, you aren’t really sitting there learning about the law itself. The preparation for law school involves a continuous accumulation of skills. Writing, reading, researching, critical thinking, and communication skills (written and oral) are very important. Many majors can give you these skills such as political science, philosophy, english, history, anthropology, even some business programs. But what would you learn in a law major? Again, you don’t learn how to be a lawyer until you are employed as a lawyer. Even in law school, you are prepared to “think like a lawyer”. They don’t sit there and teach you how to be a lawyer. There is no law major because the skills necessary for law can be accumulated through a whole bunch of different majors. Hell, you can major in anything as long as you supplement it with enough critical thinking, writing, and researching courses.</p>
<p>OK guys, no matter what you say, it’s still pretty damn stupid that there are no 5 year law degrees that one could work towards after graduating high school. Honestly, the 4 year undergrad thing can easily be done in 3 years, and I won’t be the first one to say that the 3rd year of law school is a little superfluous. </p>
<p>The whole learning how to read/research/write thing is a weak argument. Skills such as these should be thought in high school, as well as through personal endeavors. Then there all those students who major in an “easy” subject just so they would have a pretty GPA. Of course law school will feed you with their “well-rounded individual” BS because they need the big $$$ to come in every year.</p>
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<p>just because those skills should be taught in high school, doesn’t necessarily mean they are. i am glad that four years of undergrad is required before moving onto law school, med school, etc. it proves that the person actually has a brain and has cultivated (at the very least) some sort of critical thinking skills. i honestly would not feel comfortable having a doctor OR lawyer that didn’t have four years of undergrad to mature into themselves.</p>
<p>^ It looks to me like you’re assuming that the traditional 4 year undergrad experience is the only path to maturity because that way of thinking has been so emphasized by many American undergrad institutions that it became mainstream. </p>
<p>Whatever maturity I was able to pick up since HS certainly did not come from college but from having to provide for myself. </p>
<p>A doctor does not need to major in English or take a certain number of humanities classes to be well-read.</p>
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What I meant more by that was the amount of time and years it takes to get a PhD compared to a professional degree. MD and PhD are pretty comparable, but a 1 year MSE program or a 2 year MBA program requires a lot less time and (definitely in the case of the MBA) a lot less rigor than a PhD program.</p>
<p>The main reason I prefer the undergrad->professional school track compared to getting an MD or JD right out of undergrad is that high school isn’t the best predictor for future success. College is a much better one. There are kids who worked very hard in high school, but can’t cut it in college, and definitely wouldn’t cut it in an MD or JD program. In the same way, there are students who didn’t take high school very seriously but tried a lot harder in college and were able to go on to top MD and JD programs and are very successful. If we admitted people to JDs and MDs right out of high school, would we really be getting the best doctors and lawyers?</p>
<p>Nobody has yet addressed my question pertaining to the differences of a law education in the U.S. versus countries which produce their lawyers at the undergraduate level. The process of obtaining a J.D. often costs hundreds of thousands of dollars(7 years of higher learning) and it is questionable that 4 years of undergrad are even needed to obtain the skills needed in law school.</p>
<p>So, basically it boils down to this: Why should an undergraduate degree be a prerequisite for law school? From what I can tell, these four years are spent by many perspective law students ratcheting up their GPAs and LORs and not necessarily honing in on the skills they need for law school. I am prone to error, though.</p>
<p>There is in the UK.</p>
<p>I believe it’s 2 years for an undergraduate law degree in the UK, followed by training in a law firm, followed by admission as a lawyer. I may have screwed up the details a little bit; someone may want to check on it.</p>
<p>College in the UK is much more specialized than in the US.
- Advantage: you’re only focusing on subjects related to your future career; you become better-trained than your average US graduate (for example, undergraduate law-training in the UK is much less theory-based and much more practical; you’ll be much less stressed when starting to work for a firm compared to a US law school graduate, because the US graduate will have no idea what the hell s/he is doing while a UK graduate will).
- Disadvantage: the narrow focus may be slightly limiting in other respects</p>
<p>In general, however, I would suggest that if you know what you want to do for your future even before you get to college, go to the UK. Mainly because it tends to be MUCH cheaper and more specialized.</p>
<p>CCC88</p>
<p>Whether it’s a better system or not is irrelevant when the State Bar Associations require things like Bachelors degrees:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ncbex.org/fileadmin/mediafiles/downloads/Comp_Guide/2007CompGuide.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ncbex.org/fileadmin/mediafiles/downloads/Comp_Guide/2007CompGuide.pdf</a></p>
<p>The link is to a PDF of all the basic state requirements to sit for the Bar Exam. Specifically look at page 16 of the file to see all the states that require a bachelor’s degree in order to sit for the Bar exam.</p>