What to Know About Prelaw College Majors

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A prelaw major isn’t the only or even necessarily the best option for future lawyers, experts say.

By Ilana Kowarski
June 25, 2020

A COMMON MISCONCEPTION among law school hopefuls is the belief that they must pursue a college major that is law-related, but J.D. admissions experts say nothing could be further from the truth.

A prelaw major is not mandatory for admission to law school, experts emphasize, and it’s not even available at many undergraduate institutions. Because colleges often refrain from offering professional degrees and instead focus on traditional academic disciplines like history and chemistry, schools that offer a prelaw major are the exception to the norm, according to experts.

Prelaw college majors are designed to prepare aspiring lawyers for law school, and these majors often include an eclectic combination of humanities and social science classes ranging from philosophy to political science. An undergraduate prelaw curriculum may also include seminars on specific areas of law like constitutional law, and it could include classes on topics relevant to the practice of law such as rhetoric, public policy, psychology, sociology, accounting or economics.

Although this field of study touches on many subjects that might be intriguing to aspiring attorneys, there are other concentrations that can provide a solid foundation for a legal education, experts say, noting that an undergraduate degree in nearly any field can set the stage for a law degree.

One reason aspiring lawyers have so much flexibility when choosing what they study is that law schools do not expect incoming students to have specific content knowledge, explains attorney Jeffrey Molinaro, a partner with Fuerst Ittleman David & Joseph, a Miami-based business law firm.

“There is no real set curriculum, and there is no real knowledge base that is tested on the entrance exam for law school,” Molinaro added, referring to the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT. “It’s a skill-based test.”

Current and former law school admissions officials encourage prospective law students to take college courses that they find most compelling, as long as those classes are challenging. They stress that unlike medical schools, which will consider applicants only if they have completed certain prerequisite classes such as organic chemistry, law schools typically do not instruct candidates about the undergraduate courses they should take.

Christine Carr, a law school admissions consultant with Accepted and former associate director of J.D. admissions at Boston University School of Law, observes that college students tend to do well when they focus on subjects they enjoy.

“The choice of major should not be made solely ‘because it will look good on a law school application and show that I am interested’ – that is what the personal statement is for,” she wrote in an email, adding that college students may join their school’s prelaw society regardless of their major.

Anna Ivey, founder of Ivey Consulting and former dean of admissions for the University of Chicago Law School, says law schools don’t “have any special preference” for prelaw majors.

“Admissions officers are mostly agnostic when it comes to choice of major and indeed try to assemble a class with a variety of different backgrounds and areas of expertise,” Ivey wrote in an email. “And in a moment of candor, they would probably also tell you that they don’t consider pre-law majors to be all that analogous to what you do in law school, and that it’s better to wait until you get to law school to study law.”

Some law school faculty members discourage aspiring lawyers from pursuing prelaw majors.

“A prelaw major doesn’t provide particular subject matter skills, and may therefore be a wasted opportunity,” Nora V. Demleitner, the Roy L. Steinheimer, Jr. Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia, wrote in an email. “After all, in today’s law practice lawyers often benefit from subject matter knowledge, such as acquired in data science, health, art, forensics, depending on the practice area. Why limit your exposure and interest to law only?”

David Jacoby, an adjunct professor of law at Fordham University School of Law in New York City and a partner at the Culhane Meadows corporate law firm, notes that college may be a future lawyer’s last opportunity to study a subject besides law.

There is also a risk that someone who begins college as a prelaw major might discover later that he or she doesn’t want to become a lawyer, Jacoby adds. He warns against exclusively taking law-related classes. “You’re sort of narrowing your options to a considerable extent at that point.”

Victoria Turner Turco, founder and president of Turner Educational Advising, suggests that not all prelaw programs are equivalent. Aspiring lawyers should steer clear of vocationally oriented and technically focused prelaw majors that are designed to train paralegals.

If someone does opt for a prelaw degree, it should be a traditional liberal arts degree that will cultivate the intellectual habits necessary for legal practice, says Turco, who managed a prelaw and professional development program at Georgetown University in the District of Columbia for more than a decade.

Admissions data collected and reported by the Law School Admission Council reveals that in the 2019-2020 academic year, law school hopefuls who majored in prelaw and related fields such as law, political science and legal studies did not receive the highest LSAT scores on average, nor did they have the highest law school acceptance rates among majors.

Kellye Testy, the LSAC’s president and CEO, says she takes a “pretty neutral” view on prelaw majors since her opinion is that aspiring lawyers can benefit from any rigorous undergraduate program that is taught by excellent faculty.

“No matter what somebody’s teaching, you’ll learn more from a great teacher. It doesn’t matter the subject.”

Seventeenth Judicial Circuit Appoints Judge Bowman as Circuit’s First Appellate Division Chair

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The following article was written by Jeffrey J. Molinaro for the March 2020 issue of the Broward County Bar Association’s Barrister Magazine. A full copy of the edition is available here. Mr. Molinaro is a proud member of the Broward County Bar Association.

On January 29, 2020, the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit announced a restructuring of its Appellate Division. As part of this restructuring process, Circuit Judge John Bowman was appointed by Chief Judge Jack Tuter as the division’s first Appellate Chair.

Pursuant to Article V, § 5(b) of the Florida Constitution, the circuit courts of Florida have appellate jurisdiction when provided by general law. The scope of the circuit courts’ appellate jurisdiction is found at § 26.012(1), Florida Statutes. The Appellate Division’s restructuring comes as it braces for a potential increase in appeals as a result of the legislature’s expansion of the County Court’s jurisdictional limit of $15,000 to $30,000, which became effective January 1, 2020.

As currently composed, the Appellate Division hears appeals of County Court decisions in three judge panels. However, circuit judges are neither permanently nor exclusively assigned to the Appellate Division. Instead, circuit judges are appointed to appellate panels on a six-month rotation. Previously, the Circuit relied upon court staff to oversee the Appellate Division. However, due to the potential influx of additional appellate cases, the rotation of appellate panel members, and to ensure consistency within and supervision over the Appellate Division, a permanent judicial chair was created to oversee the division. The appointment of a permanent chair is designed to allow the Court to continue to handle County to Circuit appeals in an efficient manner despite an increase in caseload which might arise.

The Appellate Division’s restructuring comes at a time when County to Circuit appeals have come under increased scrutiny due to the lack of uniformity in the County to Circuit appeals process across the state. Critics of the County to Circuit appeals process have focused on three areas: i) the lack of uniformity in the use of three judge panels instead of single judges to hear such appeals; ii) the fact that not all circuits publish their appellate opinions either online or within Florida Law Weekly; and iii) circuit appellate rulings are not binding on other circuit panels; thus, intra- as well as inter-circuit conflicting decisions occur. (It should be noted that the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit both uses three judge panels and publishes its opinions on its website.)

As a result of these deficiencies, in its 2017 regular-cycle report, the Florida Bar’s Appellate Court Rules Committee proposed amending rule 9.030 (Jurisdiction of Courts) of the Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure to require that all circuit courts adopt three judge panels. However, the Florida Supreme Court rejected this proposal. Instead, the Court created a workgroup to research these issues and propose substantive changes if necessary. Ultimately, the workgroup recommended that the legislature pass legislation to strip the circuit courts of jurisdiction over county court appeals and instead have such appeals heard by the District Courts of Appeal. While no legislation is pending, the Florida Supreme Court endorsed the workgroup’s recommendation on November 8, 2019.

A lifelong Broward County resident and graduate of Florida Atlantic University and St. Thomas University School of Law, Judge Bowman was first elected to the Circuit Court in 2002. Judge Bowman currently serves in the Circuit Civil Division. In announcing Judge Bowman’s appointment, Chief Judge Tuter explained that Judge Bowman will serve as chair of the Appellate Division while continuing his full-time civil trial duties. We wish Judge Bowman success in his new endeavor.

Nursing Home Patient’s Family Can’t Revive Axed Jury Win

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By Y. Peter Kang
January 17, 2018

Law360, Los Angeles (January 17, 2018, 8:54 PM EST) — A Florida appellate panel on Wednesday affirmed a trial judge’s decision to overturn a jury verdict in favor of the son of an elderly woman who allegedly died because of a nursing home’s negligence, saying the plaintiff’s medical expert’s opinion was contradicted by the evidence.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel for the Third District Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge’s decision to set aside a jury’s verdict in favor of Robert Siegel in a suit accusing Cross Gardens Care Center LLC of providing negligent care for his mother, Sybil Siegel, which purportedly contributed to her death at the age of 88. The majority said Siegel’s medical expert, Dr. Lee Fisher, submitted a medical opinion that was contradicted by the patient’s medical records and that therefore his opinion should never have been presented to the jury.

The appeals court said the burden was on Robert Siegel to prove that the alleged negligence “more likely than not” caused the patient’s death.

“An examination of Dr. Fisher’s opinions indicates that, time and again, he drew inferences from the medical records that were not more-likely-than-not,” the 12-page majority opinion states. “Indeed, at critical points, his opinions are directly contradicted by the very medical records upon which they are purportedly based.”

In Fisher’s opinion, Sybil Siegel died of pneumonia and the nursing home’s medical staff had failed to properly monitor her and order her timely transfer to a hospital, but the panel said the doctor makes this assumption based on the fact that there were no entries in the nurse’s notes for a two-week period.

“The problem with this inference is that it is contradicted by the raft of medical reports indicating that Ms. Siegel’s condition was being constantly monitored, recorded, and reported throughout that period,” the majority said. “Dr. Fisher’s inference that the ‘gap’ in the notes signified that she was not monitored is worse than speculation: it is contradicted by the only evidence Dr. Fisher or the jury had.”

The majority also took issue with Fisher’s theory that Siegel could have lived for an additional three years had she received timely treatment, an assessment based on the fact that she had been previously hospitalized for pneumonia and survived.

“This is a total non sequitur,” it said. “It does not follow that because a person was admitted with pneumonia at age 60, 70, or 80 and survived that she will necessarily survive if she is admitted with pneumonia at age 88.”

The panel noted that Fisher never personally examined the patient so his assertion that she died of pneumonia is contradicted by the medical records, which state that the patient’s official cause of death was end-stage dementia and end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“Dr. Fisher’s opinion that pneumonia caused her death, which is based entirely on the medical records, but which is flatly contradicted by the medical records, is entitled to no evidentiary weight,” the court said.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Robert J. Luck voted to reinstate the jury’s verdict, saying the legal principles for reviewing judgments notwithstanding the verdict does not allow the court to reweigh testimony and choose between conflicting evidence.

“After reviewing the conflicting records, listening to Dr. Fisher’s direct and cross-examination, and hearing the attorneys’ arguments during closing about why he should and shouldn’t be believed, the jury credited Dr. Fisher’s testimony in finding that the nursing home violated chapter 400, which caused the Siegel family’s injuries,” Luck said. “We should not reweigh Dr. Fisher’s testimony and substitute our view for the jury’s.”

Siegel had sought nearly $500,000 in damages, but the jury awarded a sum of approximately $6,100.

An attorney for the nursing home said he was pleased with the appellate ruling.

“We think the trial court and the Court of Appeal got it right,” said Christopher M. David of Fuerst Ittleman David & Joseph PL. “We think this opinion will go a long way in relieving nursing homes of being forced to prove negatives when defending themselves in court.”

An attorney for Siegel declined to comment on Wednesday.

Judges Thomas Logue, Edwin A. Scales III and Robert J. Luck sat on the panel for the Third District.

Siegel is represented by Douglas F. Eaton of Eaton & Wolk PL.

The nursing home is represented by Christopher M. David, Michael B. Kornhauser and Jeffrey J. Molinaro of Fuerst Ittleman David & Joseph PL.

The case is Robert Siegel v. Cross Senior Care Inc. et al., case number 3D16-600, in the Third District Court of Appeal, Florida.

–Editing by Jill Coffey.