Is it a good idea to major in sociology, social work, community, and health? I want to become a family lawyer.
Family law is, for most lawyers, a miserable practice area. You have to have the right personality and constitution for it. If you want to be a family lawyer to “help families,” be prepared for a mostly frustrating (highly frustrating) career. If you want to be a family lawyer to help protect people from the family court system, you will also experience a mostly frustrating career, but not as much as for those who go into family law with the intention of “helping families”—family law is not the best place to expend one’s time, effort, and care, if helping families is your goal. Better to be an excellent pastor, teacher, coach, therapist, social worker (good luck being an excellent social worker if you’re employed by the government—you’ll need it), or something like that. Don’t get me wrong; the world needs good family lawyers, but family lawyers do little to preserve and protect families (and those who try rarely succeed). Family lawyers are there either to victimize through the legal system or to protect people from being victimized by or in the system.
OK, now on to your question. This just my opinion, but I submit it is an educated one:
Law school is intellectually demanding in terms of difficulty, intensity, and volume. Sociology, social work, other areas of study like them are generally and comparatively intellectually lightweight (notice I stated “generally”; there are surely some exceptions, I concede). While it is not impossible for a sociology or social work majors to succeed in law school, I would suggest you major in something that will better equip you for the rigors of law school. English, Philosophy (both the fun and the hard stuff), or hard sciences—disciplines that develop your ability to think, to analyze, and to synthesize. And take classes that teach you to research and write well.
Sociology, social work, and public health treat some of the subjects that family law treats, but not as much as you might believe. In my personal opinion, the sociological, social work, and public health evidence that the courts consider isn’t very reliable or consistent or even all that accurate. You can find a “study” to support any position. Which is a shame because it tars the truly scientific and accurate studies with the broad brush of hackery characteristic of so much of the rubbish.
One thing that might be of extreme value, however, would be to major in sociology or social work in the most intellectually and scientifically rigorous program you can get into, get a master’s degree in it, then go to law school, and then become a family lawyer who stays apprised of and specializes as an expert in the science that is relevant to family law issues. That would be a hard, expensive, time-consuming pathway to becoming a family lawyer, but you’d be one of the best as a result.
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