Lots of Wannabe Lawyers Want to be Politicians

By  
on

Remember the folks at Kaplan — the ones who helped get your LSAT score from the 150s to the 170s, sending you on the path to a glorious career in Biglaw? We don’t hear from them all that often at ATL, but they recently emailed us a press release about a survey of this year’s LSAT test takers.
The Kaplan folks thought it was interesting that more than 40 percent of the 1,040 people who took the February 2009 LSAT said the recession is motivating them to apply to law school. Eh — we weren’t that blown away. School is a safe harbor. A debt-generating safe harbor, but a safe harbor.
What we thought was interesting was this. Over half of those heading to law school hope to end up on a ballot rather than Ballard Spahr:

Law School Remains a Popular Breeding Ground for Future Politicians: 54 percent of respondents say they will “definitely” or “probably” run for political office. Despite this high overall number, between genders there is a significant gap in interest level, with 68 percent of males answering “definitely” or “probably,” compared with 41 percent of females.

Maybe it’s not terribly surprising that many an aspirational law school student hopes to one day be a lawmaker. But this does represent an increase in wannabe politicos among the logic game solvers. We talked to Kaplan’s Director of Pre-Law programs, Jeff Thomas, who told us that last year, only 42 percent of LSAT takers said they wanted to get paid by taxpayers.
Has Obama’s law degree proved more inspiring than Bush’s MBA? Thomas speculated that “a law degree has become more of a necessity for political office.” He also said: “Anecdotally, I can tell you that fewer hands go up now when we ask people if they plan to work for a big law firm or go into private practice.” He says more LSAT takers are saying they want to do public interest, human rights work, or lobbying.
Which one is not like the others on that list?

Sponsored

Topics