Pre-Law Concentration
If you want to go to law school and become a lawyer, our pre-law program offers you some of the best preparation for law school! What differentiates our pre-law concentration from our general political science curriculum is an added focus on critical thinking, reading, and speaking. Thus, in the pre-law concentration, you'll be required to take several pre-law courses as well as English and communication courses with intensive writing and speaking components.
One of our pre-law advisors and faculty has a law degree and can speak from firsthand experience about law school and clerking for a judge. Our other pre-law advisor and faculty has several years of experience managing successful moot court and mock trial teams. Both have published academic works on law and judicial politics. Together our pre-law advisors and faculty teach several law courses and advise the Moot Court and mock trial programs, as well as the Law Club.
Our pre-law courses include Introduction to Law and Legal Reasoning, Mock Trial, Moot Court, Constitutional Law, Civil Rights Law, and Civil Liberties (Free Speech and Religious Liberty). In all your pre-law courses you'll be learning and practicing all of the things lawyers and law students do: reading and summarizing court cases, legally analyzing factual situations, constructing extensive legal arguments in writing, and presenting those arguments verbally before judges. Our pre-law concentration complies with the joint American Bar Association/Law School Admission Council guidelines for pre-law programs. By the time you go to law school, you'll be ready to hit the ground running!
Successful completion of undergraduate work in our pre-law concentration will provide you with an exceptionally strong background for success in law school and a legal career. Typically, a majority of our department's majors across our three programs are at least seriously considering going to law school. Many of our students have gained admittance to outstanding schools of law nationwide such as Harvard, Virginia, Georgetown, Houston, Howard, Minnesota, and Baylor. Our students also regularly gain admission to all the excellent law schools within Louisiana: LSU, Loyola New Orleans, Southern University, and Tulane.
With a law degree, you can go on to private practice, big city law firms, small town law offices, corporate counsel, prosecuting attorneys, public defenders, or administrative enforcement for government agencies, as well as other non-legal jobs such as running not-for-profit organizations or becoming business managers. Our former students are working as attorneys and judges all across Louisiana and around the country.