The legal profession

Economics students are increasingly enrolling in law school

The economics major is one of many common paths to law school. The Law School Admission Council provides the official guide to law schools for the American Bar Association. The Guide emphasizes extensive reading and library research, skill in synthesizing large amounts of information, and logical thinking. In addition to general skills, the Guide points to breadth of knowledge of history, politics, finance, human behavior, and diverse cultures.

Many careers in law involve shaping economic decisions. Writing and interpreting contracts, supporting mergers and acquisitions, dealing with the tax system, addressing disputes of workers, landlords, and vendors; all involve decisions with significant economic content and implications.

An analysis of scores on the LSAT test for law school admission reported for students who apply to at least one ABA accredited law school shows economic majors earned relatively high mean LSAT scores. The LSAT score ranges from 120 to 180 with mean and median near 151. The 90th percentile is about 165. The LSAT score along with undergraduate grade point average and the quality of the undergraduate college are important influences in the admissions decisions of competitive law schools.

Among 2015-16 law school applicants, economics majors had a mean LSAT score of 158.8, which was the highest score of the 16 largest disciplines (with more than 950 law school applicants). Economics placed second behind math/physics (161.7) out of 29 discipline groupings created to contain at least 325 students with similar majors. The years 2001-2 through 2015-16 reveal similar rankings.

Source: Michael Nieswiadomy, "LSAT® scores of economics majors: The 2015–16 class update and 15-year history," Journal of Economic Education 48 #4, Jan 2017. Pp. 327-332 and "Law School Admission Test," Wikipedia, viewed May 14, 2021.