Ditch, I know you are a lawyer so this is why I'm asking you. If any of you are lawyers, please pitch in.

Anyways, I'm really thinking about college now. Personal reasons which I really can't get into. I know I'm a day late and a couple grand short but better late than never, right? I was thinking, what can I excel at? We know it's not gonna be fishing. Then I figured how interested I am in civil rights and all sorts of law.

How would I go about becoming a lawyer? I know it takes many years of college and then law school and the BAR exam but I'm not exactly sure how to start out. I know I'm not going to be a Johnny Cochran, getting up in front of people, making the court room ooh and ahh over some startling revelation but you know, there are other parts of law to get into which is fine with me.

So what's the first step? Mind helping me out?

Thanks,

Have you taken the SATs or Achievements?

Are you studying for them?

As Jaiem said, you start by taking the appropriate college admissions exams--either the SAT and Achievements series, or the ACT. Most colleges want the SAT. Once you're admitted to college, there is no specific major required to apply for, and get admitted to, law school. A lot of people wind up in law school because they majored in some liberal arts discipline (like philosophy, humanities, political science) that prepared them for no particular field of work. They opted to become educated rather than trained. You can major in anything you want---applied sciences, the liberal arts, business administration, nothing will keep you from applying to law school. Once you graduate, in order to apply for law school, you have to take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). When I took the LSAT, it was graded the same way as the SAT, on a 200-800 scale. I think they grade it now on a 20-80 scale. In order to sit for a bar exam, the law school has to have at least a provisional accredidation from the ABA. In Connecticut, UConn, Yale and Quinnipiac have accredited law schools. The University of Bridgeport closed its law school.

You should expect to have at least a 3.25 undergraduate GPA and a LSAT score or 600--or 60 on the new scale--before an accredited school will accept you.

Law schools themselves really don't teach you "the law", at least as it applies to passing your state's bar exam. They teach "multistate" legal principles, how to read cases and discern legal principles from them, and some practice skills in courses like trial advocacy and appellate advocacy. Most law school grads invest money in a bar exam prep course after they graduate. Bar exams are given twice a year, usually at the end of July---with most of the recent grads sitting--and again in February where most of the testees will be "re-takers" people who failed the first one. Passing grades, and exam difficulty, varies from state to state. NY has a difficult exam but a passing grade is 66. You also have to take an Ethics exam before getting admitted.

Admission in one state doesn't allow you to practice in any other state, or in the Federal system. Getting admitted in most federal courts requires only that two members of the bar of that court sponsor you, and bring a motion on your behalf. Some states allow admitted attorneys from other states to "waive in" without taking that state's exam after a certain amount of experience, and some states---most of the biggies like California, Texas and Florida--make you take their own exams regardless of your legal experience. I hear the California exam is a mother to pass.