Department
of Political Science
Department
of Political ScienceBradley University PreLaw Program
We expect demand for admission to law schools to remain high for the foreseeable future. If you hope to go, you will have to prepare yourself carefully during your undergraduate years.
Law schools advise a “broad general background” with attention to oral and written expression and some exposure to such law-related subjects as political science, American history, business, economics, psychology and accounting. (See Preparing for Law School) At Bradley, the most common majors are political science, English or accounting; all are good. Some students have majored in unusual fields, and each year or two we have an engineering major who is accepted somewhere. Recently, some law schools have begun to recommend technical backgrounds for students who want careers in certain legal specialties. In particular, science is recommended for environmental protection law, mechanical-science backgrounds for patent law and health sciences for health care law. For such students, double majors may be useful.
The main admission variable for almost all law schools remains undergraduate grades. So if you really want to go to law school, you have to make getting a high GPA your major priority. Other things—publications, work experience, travel—may make a student more attractive, but will not compensate for poor grades. The Law School Admission Test (LSAT), usually taken at the end of the junior year, is important. When the time comes, you will need to prepare for it carefully. But the LSAT scores “correlate” with grades; the students who do best on the test are usually the ones who have been making good grades all along.
Bradley maintains an active prelaw program with four faculty advisers, a chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha national law fraternity, a legal studies club, a prep course for the LSAT (offered on campus most spring semesters by the Stanley H. Kaplan organization), an informational network and a reference library. Many students participate in Bradley’s nationally recognized forensics program or the new mock trial program. Still others have learned about law through the various speakers’ programs which bring to campus such distinguished lawyers as F. Lee Bailey and Sarah Weddington. Perhaps most important, Bradley offers the chance for contact with other high-quality students with similar career goals, in an educational atmosphere featuring small classes, teaching-oriented faculty and personal attention.
