Law schools must do more to help students choose a specialty

Even before law students finish their first year of law school, they must make a crucial decision: which specialty to choose. Among the common options are corporate, criminal, intellectual property, public interest and others.

To make this decision, students look at a few main factors — salary, available opportunities and prestige. However, as the co-founder of a law school admissions company, I can attest that the decision needs a far more thorough and inward evaluation.

Choosing a law specialty affects not only income but also students’ lifestyle, stress levels, work-life balance and long-term career satisfaction. Even with such high stakes, most universities offer surprisingly limited career guidance to help students choose their legal speciality.

Although university departments such as career services and law advising offer some direction and services to connect students with employers, review their resumes and help prepare for interviews, they often fail to account for the fact that a speciality shouldn’t only be linked to employment prospects, but also align with a student’s interests, passions, skills and long-term goals.

In the short-term, such a misalignment may not raise many alarm bells, but in the long run, it can lead to early burnout, career dissatisfaction and a lack of professional clarity. By then, it’s usually too late to make any changes.

So what should law schools do differently?

First, law schools should integrate an option early in the curriculum to explore specialties other than the 16 common law specialties, according to Juris Education. This can be done through practical experience, such as shadowing opportunities, internships and first-year programs that allow students to get real-time practice experience in the specialty they choose. This also gives students a more flexible opportunity to learn the skills of the trade without the pressure of full-time employment tied to it.

Second, when helping students evaluate their options, whether through advising programs or career services, law schools should present a more holistic view of the specialty in question. This should include statistics such as long-term career growth, average career timeline, work hours, job satisfaction, opportunities for career transition and so on. This would help students get a comprehensive view of their career, one that is not only driven by monetary outcomes.

Third, law schools must do a better job of helping students connect with the right mentors early on. Pairing students with current lawyers based on a student’s interests could help them envision what a career in that position would look like. Students should also be encouraged to ask their mentors questions that go just beyond the job such as the work culture, lifestyle, stress levels and so on.

Finally, career services and development departments should expand their focus from helping students find employment to also assessing their strengths, weaknesses, passions and working preferences. It can be done through comprehensive questionnaires prepared with the help of career and psychology experts, or by adding a requirement to attend professional training during law school to assess their experience on these criteria.

This would allow students to discover their passion and purpose in addition to job responsibilities. While law schools strongly emphasize external analysis, this internal evaluation done while in law school can save students years of career stress, uncertainty and burnout.

Since law school is where law students spend most of their formative professional years, these institutions bear the responsibility of ensuring career decisions are made thoughtfully and with full awareness of their long-term impact. While choosing a speciality is a personal decision, law schools can help ensure that it is informed by more than prestige or starting salary alone.

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Career services and academic advising departments must model this shift by offering guidance that values more than compensation and statistics. This would allow students to broaden their perspective and recognize that intangible factors such as work-life balance, values alignment and long-term fulfillment also play a decisive role in building a successful legal career.

As the legal profession evolves with the emergence of new fields and artificial intelligence, students need expert guidance to choose the right career path. Law schools must shoulder this responsibility by equipping students with better information and deeper self-awareness so they’re not left to guesswork, especially after paying high tuition for law school.

Educational institutions like law schools already prioritize academic rigor that their students must embody, but by investing more intentionally in holistic professional alignment, they can help strengthen the long-term health of such a demanding profession.

arush.chandna@juriseducation.com

Arush Chandna is a co-founder of Juris Education, a leading law school admissions consulting firm.