How to Become a Lawyer: Everything You Need to Know
/How long does it take to become a lawyer? Learn more about the legal profession, plus what steps you should take to pursue your dream law career
What does the lawyer career path look like?
Introduction
A legal career can be an excellent choice for many students, especially if they are more comfortable working with words than with numbers. Lawyer ranks #9 on the U.S. News and World Report ranking of 100 Best Jobs.
On top of the satisfaction of helping clients, lawyers earn salaries that are well above average, with partners at the top law firms routinely making over $1 million per year. But even for those who don’t wind up in the very highest tiers of the legal profession, a lawyer’s income is still high, with the median salary clocking in at $127, 990 in 2022.
In this guide, we’ll discuss how to become a lawyer and explain what you should do in order to achieve your career dreams and ambitions.
How to become a lawyer
Generally speaking, you need to go to law school, earning a JD degree (Juris Doctor), and then pass the bar exam.
Each state has its own bar exam, but they are all very similar. The bar exam tests your knowledge of “black letter law” (as opposed to theory) and covers subjects such as constitutional law, contracts, torts, criminal law, and civil procedure. It’s a two-day affair (sometimes three). There’s usually a multiple-choice section of 200 questions, six 30-minute essay questions, and a “performance test” based on writing a legal memo based on a provided scenario. The pass rate in most states averages around 75 percent, so it’s not an easy test.
To sit for the bar, you need to have graduated with a JD from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association. There are 204 accredited law schools, ranging from Ivy League stalwarts like Harvard and Yale to solidly respectable middle-tier schools to lower-tier proprietary schools. And although there are many options when it comes to law schools, your career prospects will be significantly enhanced by going to the highest-rated school possible.
How long does it take to become a lawyer?
Law school is typically a three-year program. Your first year will be comprised of basic required courses, such as Contracts, Civil Procedure, Torts, and Constitutional Law. In your second and third years, you take more specialized courses, depending on what kind of law you want to practice. Many students also spend their second and third years as editors for one of their school’s law reviews.
To go to law school, you’ll first need to earn a bachelor’s degree and take the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). Between the two degrees, becoming a lawyer requires seven years of education.
However, some law schools also offer accelerated, six-year joint bachelor’s/JD programs, sometimes called “3+3 programs.” While these programs can save you time and money, they are intensive, highly selective, and require you to dedicate yourself to the legal profession straight out of high school. For these reasons, the vast majority of future law students opt for the traditional path.
How hard is it to become a lawyer?
Becoming a lawyer is a challenging process. Not only does it require a significant amount of time spent in school, it can also be very expensive and competitive.
The average acceptance rate across all law schools is 44 percent. But the highest tier of elite law schools, which promise the best career outcomes, are even more selective, with acceptance rates of 20 percent or lower. And out of all the people who apply to law school each year, around 40 percent don’t end up enrolling anywhere.
That’s why it’s important to put your best foot forward, beginning with strong academics throughout high school and college. The median GPA and LSAT scores of successful law school applicants are around 3.5 and 156, but, unsurprisingly, the numbers at the most prestigious schools are significantly higher.
What kinds of lawyers are there?
Broadly speaking, there are four kinds of legal practice: corporate, criminal, torts, and government.
The most elite corporate lawyers work for the hundred or so “white shoe” law firms like Skadden, Arps or Davis, Polk, and Wardell. These firms handle particularly complex legal issues like mergers and acquisitions. They generally select law students during their second year of school. Most are either students at top-14 law schools (e.g., Harvard, Columbia, UVA, Michigan) or students at the schools ranked 15–50 who are in the top 10 to 20 percent of their class. Selected students work as “summer associates” before being hired after graduation as associate lawyers.
It can be a hard job, with associates expected to complete 1,800 hours or more annually of “billable work.” That translates into 70 or 80 hours or more in the office each week, often spent on fairly routine tasks if you’re a junior associate (these tasks are sometimes known as FBUs—“fungible billing units”). And after a decade or so, only the hardest working and profitable associates are offered partnership.
Most corporate lawyers work either in smaller local law firms or work as “in-house counsel” for a business. The pay is usually much less, the work less glamorous (drafting contracts, employment contracts, etc.), but the hours are better and the pace less grueling.
Criminal lawyers either defend persons accused of a crime, or prosecute them. As with corporate law, there is a wide range. The best-paid criminal lawyers may defend high-profile, celebrity defendants, while public defenders defend the poor (and are poorly paid). Prosecutors range from U.S. attorneys handling the most serious federal cases to county prosecutors whose workload includes prosecuting DUIs.
Torts lawyers (or personal injury lawyers) handle torts, which are civil cases where someone has been wrongfully harmed and may sue the responsible party for damages. These cases can range from a thousand-dollar suit resulting from a fender-bender to complex, multi-billion-dollar suits arising from major corporate misconduct.
Then there are the tens of thousands of civil servants who are lawyers working for the federal, state, and local governments. They work in a variety of departments, handling legal issues like employment contracts or zoning decisions.
And, of course, there are judges. They range from local magistrates handling misdemeanor cases all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States, deciding the most important legal and constitutional questions in our country.
(Further reading: Should You Go to Law School? A List of Pros vs. Cons)
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How to become a lawyer: Tips for high school students
Here’s what you should focus on as a high school student interested in becoming a lawyer:
Get good grades. You want to go to a good college or university to enhance your chances of being admitted to a good law school.
Develop your writing and critical reading skills, since these are essential for law school and a legal career. Unlike medical school, there are no specific undergraduate requirements for law school, but classes that involve lots of reading, writing, and analytical thinking will be crucial in helping you develop the intellectual tools you need as a lawyer. (And note: if you want to specialize in intellectual property, you will also want to master one or more of the physical sciences.)
Explore meaningful extracurricular activities. Although your high school extracurriculars won’t have much bearing on your odds of getting into law school, activities like debate, student government, mock trial, and Model UN can help you explore your interest in law and develop your public speaking skills. Community service—whether in a legal services organization or elsewhere in your local community—is another excellent choice, as is interning at a law office or in local government over the summer. Or, you might join the school newspaper to hone your ability to write.
Some books to read
The following texts can give you greater insight into what it’s like to be a lawyer and if it might be right for you:
A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr is a fascinating story of a torts case against two major corporations, alleging that their plants contaminated the water supply in Woburn, Massachusetts, causing leukemia in a number of local residents. It gets into all the procedural details of a major torts case, as well as the negotiations for a pre-trial settlement. (You can also watch the 1998 film version starring John Travolta.)
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King is the tragic story of four young African-Americans accused of rape in Jim Crow Florida, and Thurgood Marshall’s (the first Black Supreme Court Justice) passionate and skillful appeals to try to get them a fair trial.
24 Hours with 24 Lawyers: Profiles of Traditional and Non-Traditional Careers by Jasper Kim is just what the title promises, profiles of the working life of two dozen different kinds of lawyers.
Final thoughts
Getting a bachelor’s degree and a JD takes seven years, so it’s a long path. As a high school student, now is the time to start honing the relevant reading and writing skills you’ll need and to begin thinking about the kind of lawyer you want to become someday.
About the Author
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on law school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into law school using his exclusive approach.