philosophy, politics, or economics major and law school success

[Pittman2]

Do any of you believe that majoring in philosophy, politics, or economics prior to law school gave you a distinct edge over peers that had different majors? What about other majors - help or hurt?

[QUAKER OATS]

I majored in Economics and find it very helpful.  You learn the BLL from cases and outlines, but the policy arguments are made easier by by understanding of Econ.

I wish I took more philosophy classes, though.  I can def. see how that would help you in making arguments.

[BigPimpinBU]

I was a poli sci major (useless), but took some interest in econ and philo, and that's the stuff I find to resonate the most in law school. The only thing that came in handy from poli sci was game theory.

[giraffe205]

I think that your major has no bearing on predicting success. Ppl in the top 10 or 15% all have wildly different majors and/or occupations. For instance, one of them was an art/art history major. Others have your more conventional degrees, e.g., engineering, accounting, bus. admin., polisci, english, history, econ., etc. Although they are in the top 15%, there are various others w/ the same degree, sometimes from the same school, and are in the bottom half.

[BigPimpinBU]

giraffe,

the fact that people with the same major are present in the top and bottom of the class is not in itself indicative that there is no correlation between major and success in law school. you would have to weight your conclusions by GPA in major, and you would need a sufficiently large sample to establish correlation - in a 200 person class you won't get that.

though i have no empirically provable contrary conclusions, i would guess that there is some sort of correlation (if not causation) between undergraduate study and success in law school.

[QUAKER OATS]

I was a poli sci major (useless), but took some interest in econ and philo, and that's the stuff I find to resonate the most in law school. The only thing that came in handy from poli sci was game theory.

Game Theory is economics.

[LostMyMonkeys]

One of the legal writing profs at my school suggested English. With all the writing we do as law students and attorneys, having a good bacground in the basics is invaluable.

[unlvsin]

I was in Economics major and it has REALLY helped me.  Economics provides you with a useful tool for legal analysis because it is very logical.  If you can understand how the interest rate, net exports/imports, exchange rate, supply etc. all interrelate and effect one another... you can definitely make similar connections in law (i.e. cost/benefit analysis effecting "reasonable person," or how certain Fed. Rules effect one another etc.) 

Furthermore, Economics is useful in understanding policy.  Often the law transcends objective economic principles to factor in more ethereal factors such as moral values.  For my undergrad (UCSD), I had many economics classes that focused on the policy regarding economics and society. 

I am top 5% at my law school and I believe a huge part of that success is contributable to my EConomics background.  Oh yeah, I also came into law school with ABSOLUTELY NO WRITING SKILLS.  This has actually helped me very much because legal writing is MUCH different than creative, flowery, bs writing I think the majority of people are accustomed to.  I actually receieved the CALI award for my writing class first semester and I seriously NEVER wrote (Economics Major) before law school.  Literature and writing majors actually seem to have a harder time adapting to legal writing because they have to deconstruct what they "know" and rebuild.  Me... I didn't have to deconstruct anything because I didn't know anything about writing in the first place!

[lincolnsgrandson]

A quick message to the writing majors:
I had to grade writing competition submissions for my law journals.  Some of them were full of unnecessarily verbose "creative" writing; essentially useless crap that must have proven successful in college.  Only a minority of the entries came from these kinds of fools, and I don't know if these were the creative writing majors.  However, whether you agree with me or not, I had to smack them down.  I expect that the other journals did, too.  Be careful.

[QUAKER OATS]

If I had it to do all over again:

Double Major--> Philosophy (BA) and Econ (BS)
Take a Legal Writing Course the summer b/f law school.

According to my calculations, this combination would prepare me to take over the world