What's it like to be a lawyer?

I am currently a law school student, so I am going to focus on your last two questions.

-What does it take to get into law school?

Strictly speaking, to get into law school you will need a Bachelor's degree and you will need to take the LSATs (The law school admission test). Those of course are the actual requirements that must be met to get into any law school. However, there are a lot of aspects of law school admissions. First and foremost, they will consider your college GPA and the score you received on the LSAT. Besides this, law schools will consider many factors from your life such as other activities or jobs you were involved in during school, community service activities, and they will also ask for letters of recommendations from college professors and employers. How good of grades and LSAT scores you need largely depends on where you want to go to law school. Similar to undergraduate school, schools with a better reputation in the legal community, such as Yale and Harvard, have extremely high standards for admission. Then there are schools with far lower admission standards where an average score (150) on the LSAT and a decent college GPA (sometimes under a 3.0) are sufficient for admission. So your focus during high school and undergrad should be to study hard and get the best grades you can, because the better your grades are, the better law school you will be admitted to.

-What is law school like?

Law School is much different than high school and undergrad. Classes in Law School use the Socratic Method for teaching. This means that they will give you cases to read before each class (such as Supreme Court cases), and when you get to class, the professor will ask one or two students various questions about the cases such as the facts of the case, and ask them to explain the decision that the court made. In other words, instead of the teacher lecturing about concepts in the class, the students learn the material by reading cases, and then demonstrate that they understand the material by class discussions. Another major difference is how grading is done in law school. Unlike high school where you receive a number of small assignments that make up your total grade for a class, law school classes base the grade off of only 1 (sometimes 2) tests. The advantage to this is that you don't have homework so you get to focus on learning the material instead of assignments. The hard part is that you really have to be prepared for those exams!

Overall, I would definitely recommend law school if you are interested in the practice of law. Unfortunately, a lot of people have contempt for lawyers, so you will have to learn to ignore people who try to discourage you. However, if you truly are interested in law, pursue your goals and go to law school.

As far as the issue of what it is like to be a lawyer, I of course, can't answer this from personal knowledge since I am not yet an attorney. However, I can tell you that one advantage to the field of law is that there are a wide variety of jobs available. Many attorneys are involved in litigation, which means they work in the courtroom, arguing cases in front of a judge and jury. Other attorneys never see the inside of a courtroom, and spend their careers doing things like writing contracts for clients. It all comes down to what you want to do. Some people go through law school and decide they don't want to be an attorney. These people are able to use their law degree to go into many other careers such as politics. One of the advantages to a legal career is the flexibility and opportunities you get out of it.

My largest piece of advice at this point is to focus on getting good grades, so you can get into a good college. Getting into good study habits now will help you to succeed in high school, undergrad, and law school. You should also consider taking any law related electives your high school offers to see if you are truly interested in law, and also try participating in some public speaking activities at your school such as debate or mock trial. Getting into the habit of public speaking will help you succeed throughout your life, even if you decide not to pursue a career in law.

Good luck, and again, don't let people discourage you from doing what you want.

Good info from the poster above me on law school. However, I will just forewarn you that the legal job market is BAD, there are literally no jobs for new lawyers, even top grads from good law schools (some of my friends i graduated with over 2 years ago that passed the bar are literally working in gas stations and grocery stores) so the people who think you will make a lot of money being a lawyer are flat out wrong.

Being a lawyer, contrary to the other posters, does not involve tons of public speaking unless you are purely a litigator (not many attorneys are). Being a lawyer is typically 99% reading, researching, and writing and 1% speaking/oral argument. Being a lawyer requires a high attention to detail, and excellent reading and writing skills.

I am not a lawyer but I believe lawyers have to be an extroverted person. There is a lot of public speaking involved. Some people would not enjoy being a lawyer. Some people like being on a constant stage and feel comfortable doing that. You need to get really good grades and study hard to be a lawyer. You need to be able to remember a large deal of information and convey it to an audience.

Hopefully you get an answer from an actual lawyer. Good luck

It is hard work and it is repetitious work and it can be very boring indeed. You have to have really good grades to get into law school and work very hard, every day. If you are good at it, you can earn quite a good wage though. Law school is very hard work.