Explore Legal Careers - Center for Pre-Law Advising

The American Bar Association (and CPLA!) advises students to explore law and legal careers before pursuing law school.

Why should I explore legal careers now?

Learning about the field will help you get a more realistic view of practicing law, skills that will benefit you as a lawyer, and the job market after law school.
By learning about the legal system you can also:
- Learn more about what you’ll study in law school.
- Identify practice areas that might interest you.
- Find employment opportunities before, during, and beyond law school.

What Does a Lawyer Do?

Lawyers provide legal advice and representation to companies and individuals in both civil and criminal matters. They are essential to all major aspects of business, personal and government matters. Lawyers often find themselves on the cutting edge of political and social debates, responsible for managing deals involving millions of dollars or even helping to settle life and death questions.

A practicing lawyer’s work can encompass:

Reading legal cases, spending hours or months in law libraries or online databases

Preparing contracts, briefs, and other documents, assembling boilerplate paragraphs and writing text from scratch
Planning and conducting depositions and other methods of evidence discovery, which in complicated cases can generate thousands of pages of testimony, all of which has to be read, analyzed, and refined into usable information
Traveling to jails and prisons to meet with clients
Delivering news to clients that is at times life-altering
Appearing in court frequently (Litigation Attorneys), or never/seldom appearing in court (Transactional Attorneys). Lawyers who specialize in litigation will argue cases before judges or juries.

Almost all American lawyers earn their JD degree after three years of law school, and then take the bar exam in the state in which they wish to practice. They are not required to stay in the same state where they earn their JD, though they often choose to do so. About 70% of attorneys get a job in the state in which they graduated law school.

Attorneys who graduate from a law school in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Law School or Marquette Law School) also have the option of receiving diploma privilege, which means that they can be admitted to practice law in the state of Wisconsin without having to take the Wisconsin Bar Exam. This is currently the only state that has diploma privilege.

Learn more about law degrees from the Law School Admissions Council

The Occupational Outlook Handbook: Lawyers

Video interviews with lawyers & related careers

Types of Lawyers

While many lawyers are generalists, you can choose to specialize. Here is a list of law specializations to help you explore! The major job sectors in law are private practice, business, government, judicial clerk, public interest, and education. If you’re curious how common each of these job sectors are for law graduates to pursue, see Percentage of Law Jobs by Sector. Also, salaries can vary widely depending on what type of law you practice. See Law Salaries by Job Sector.

Learn more about types of law:

Networking & Shadowing

CPLA joins the American Bar Association in recommending students take advantage of opportunities to shadow, network with, or be mentored by practicing lawyers.

Networking is an important part of building a professional community that may positively impact your career for years to come.
While networking can sound intimidating, UW-Madison’s SuccessWorks in the College of Letters & Science explains, “Networking is simply making connections with other people and sharing information.” You do this in many ways already!
Besides sharing your interests with friends, faculty members, and advisors on campus, a great way to grow your network is to sign up for SuccessWorks’ Career Conversations canvas module. This is a low-pressure way to meet hundreds of UW alumni working in a range of fields (including law) who are available to speak with you about their educational and professional journey.
We know it can be challenging to connect with professionals and are happy to help get you connected.

Reach out to CPLA at information@prelaw.wisc.edu or visit us during 1:1 appointments and drop-ins for support.

Research Law School Costs and Funding

Financing law school, like other aspects of law school preparation, can be overwhelming and intimidating.

We’ve curated helpful information on the Financing Law School page of our website, and also want to highlight an organization dedicated to increasing access to legal education through providing extensive financial guidance and related resources: AccessLex.

AccessLex Institute

AccessLex is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing valuable FREE resources for prelaw students and law students related to financial education. MAX Pre-Law by AccessLex(Now Ask EDNA) provides asynchronous lessons on financial education, as well as a live hotline, AccessConnex. You can also attend a live webinar, search the database for law school scholarships, or get ideas about schools you may want to look into using XploreJD.

Read their publication “Guide to Financing Your Legal Education!”

Looking for an easy way to start learning more about law?

Above The Law is a popular blog that presents news on the profession in a more funny/sarcastic way but still includes lots of information.
LSAC’s I Am The Law Podcast regularly posts new episodes interviewing law school graduates doing all kinds of jobs. It’s a great way to get inspired!

See below for additional resources for exploring and building your professional networks.

Jobs and Internships for Undergrads Interested in Law

The ABA suggests that students interested in law school should “Seek credit-bearing or paid internships in law-related settings during college breaks and summers. Consider law-related employment between college and law school.”

While you do not need to have legal experience on your resume to go to law school, it can be a great way to explore legal careers and narrow down what you would like to do. Here are some ideas of types of jobs and internships that you can do during college or during gap time before going to law school.

You will find some jobs with the title “legal intern” are designed for undergraduates, but you have to be willing to sift through those that are for first and second year law students to find them.

Don’t limit yourself to looking for positions with law firms. Public interest organizations, businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies tend to have opportunities for undergraduate legal internships as well.

Because it is common for legal interns to perform administrative tasks, highlight those experiences on your resume and in your cover letter.

These positions may involve doing basic legal research, filing court papers, and gathering relevant information from attorneys or clients.

Lawyers and paralegal/legal assistants typically work in the following settings:

Private law firms ranging from sole practitioners to global firms with over a 1,000 lawyers
In house counsel for companies
At all levels of the government (local, state and federal)
Nonprofits and public interest organizations

Legal Assistant positions are usually entry level positions and the easier jobs to obtain, especially if you have not graduated from college yet. Even if you don’t have any prior law related experience, you can craft a resume that highlights transferable skills obtained from other experiences to apply for these jobs. Your school or college career center can help you tailor a resume for these positions.

For Paralegal positions, paralegal certification is not required but is often listed as a preference on many job postings. Keep in mind that a job posting is a wish list, and not a list of requirements, so this should not prevent you from applying. Undergraduate students and recent alumni have been successful in obtaining these positions in the past. If you plan to work as a paralegal during gap time before law school, you may wish to look into paralegal certification, as it can increase job prospects and salary.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook: Paralegals and Legal Assistants

The Difference between Paralegal Certificates and Certification

Wisconsin Paralegal Certification Process

Here are some other job titles that you may find with legal employers:

-Client Manager: Sometimes legal employers may hire recent graduates to meet with clients before they meet with an attorney to collect initial intake information and hand that information off to the attorney.

-Legal Secretary: These roles can vary widely depending on the employer and the scope of the position. For some employers you might be answering phones and getting coffee, but in other instances, this position can be very similar to a Legal Assistant position where you are gaining a lot of great legal experience.

-Project Manager/Project Assistant: These titles can be used in place of the Legal Assistant title if the employer is hiring you for a particular project only.

-HR intern/Marketing intern/Positions in Non-Legal roles: Sometimes working in a role at a law firm that supports attorneys less directly can still give you a great insight into firm culture and help you develop some great legal networks, while allowing you to

-Patent Agent: College graduates with a STEM degree can work in patent law as a patent agent without needing a law degree. Learn more about patent agents and patent attorneys here.

-Data Analyst: Helping crunch data and visualize that data so that it can be shared with internal and/or external audiences. This can be especially important in areas like criminal law where tracking outcomes of policies are important.

-Policy Analyst: Nonprofits and governmental legal employers may have a great need for those who can write well and analyze policy.

Timing

One important thing to know about legal internships is that they often will not be on the same timeline for hiring as other kinds of internships (ie. Engineering or Business related internships). If you are going into spring semester, it is not too late to find legal internships or other legal related job opportunities. Often pre-law students express feeling behind their peers in their jobs search, but many times legal employers may not post positions starting in summer until well into to spring. It’s always great to start searching early, but don’t panic if it’s taking longer to find the right position.

How do I search for legal jobs and internships?

Legal employers may not have bandwidth to do a lot of undergraduate recruiting, so you may have to look harder and try some additional tactics to secure these types of positions.

Here are some steps to take to find these types of opportunities:

Meet with a career advisor with your school or college to go over job search strategies, the best websites to use, and to review your resume before applying. You can use your school or college’s career center for pre-law job search questions even if you are not in a major that is typically seen as common for pre-law students. The information listed on this website will give you some ideas but is not exhaustive. (For more information on what to ask your career advisor versus your pre-law advisor, check out our advising page.)
The best way to secure an internship in a legal firm is to utilize your contacts and further develop a network of legal professionals. Know an attorney? Know someone who knows an attorney? Let them know you are looking for positions, and ask them to suggest anyone they know who may be looking for help.
The term “legal intern” is often used for internships designed for students already in law school, so a search for legal internships can sometimes feel very discouraging to undergraduate students. Be nimble in your search terms. Many legal internships do not have the word law or legal in the job title. Ex. “Immigration intern.” Also, try adding the word “Undergraduate” to your ‘Legal Intern” search.
If you haven’t already, sign in to Handshake, UW-Madison’s job search platform, to activate your profile and begin searching for jobs and internships. You will find some law jobs posted here, but for best results, you’ll want to use other job search boards as well.
Try searching on Indeed, the Law Bulletin Job Site, LinkedIn, Nation Jobs, 80,000 Hours, or these Legal Job Search websites.
If you are open to an internship with a Non-Profit, check out Idealist.org.
If you are looking for opportunities with the Federal Government, the main search site is USAJobs.gov. The Federal Government hires all majors, and entry level jobs for undergrads are typically GS level 5-7. The website MakingtheDifference.org is designed to teach you all you need to know for an effective job search within the Federal Government.
If you are into social justice, check out the Successworks Social Justice Internship Program.
If you are interested in interning abroad, check out UW-Madison’s International Internship Program.
If you’re looking to become more involved on campus and advocate for issues with the UW Administration, Madison City Council, or the WI State Legislature, you may consider applying for an internship with the Associated Students of Madison (ASM).
Students who are interested in policy, politics, legislation or government often pursue internships at the Wisconsin State Capitol. See the Political Science Department Internships page.
Want to work in DC? Check out the Wisconsin in Washington Program.
Want to work in NYC? Check out the Cornell Prelaw Program & Internship in New York City.
Subscribe to the Center for Pre-Law Advising Newletter. We sometimes post job or internship announcements there.
If you are interested in temp jobs as a Legal Assistant, Legal Secretary, or Paralegal, check out Robert Half Talent Solutions.
Follow firms that you are interested in on Linkedin, Facebook and other social media. Sometimes they might only post a job via social networks.
Cold outreach. Sometimes lawyers are so busy that they need help but do not have the time to post an ad, especially in public interest or small firms. Consider reaching out to inquire about whether they are currently hiring or planning to hire anyone soon.