Legal Employment: Getting One BA vs Getting Two BAs

[ZooBoingKnight]

Hey, everyone. So I’ve taken more undergraduate courses than necessary for 1 degree. I’m now trying to decide whether I should:

(A) cash in sooner to get one BA (English and Philosophy double major, Economics minor) or

(B) take a few more courses than I had planned, cash in later, and get two BAs (BA English major, Linguistics minor; BA Philosophy major, Economics minor).

Which option do you think that legal employers would prefer, (a) or (b)? Furthermore, do you think that having two of the same degree would make me look more or less attractive to employers than having one degree?

Please note some related details: I’m leaning toward corporate law, but my mind is open to any sub-field. I don’t mind taking the extra time to get another degree. And I’m not yet concerned with how having two degrees affects my law school eligibility. 

Thank you!

PS: If you’re curious, here’s are my progress/scheduling details: I’ve already completed a double major in English and philosophy. I’m working on a minor in economics. I’m also taking some linguistics courses out of interest. If I take a few more linguistics courses than I had planned, then I can also get a minor in linguistics. If I get a minor in linguistics, then I’ll have enough credit to split my current degree into two degrees (see B).

[CleanHands]

No legal employer is going to give the slightest shit about this whatsoever.

[ZukoJD]

Have to agree with Cleanhands. I have a minor I don't even bother mentioning on my resume anymore.

If we were talking about an economics major versus a minor, then maybe that could mean something for certain fields of law. Philosophy and English however might as well be the same thing from an employer's POV. 

[Jaggers]

Why would anyone possibly care if you have two BAs? It's more likely to be seen as a negative if anyone cares at all.

[Zarathustra]

If your GPA is ok then save yourself some time and work on your LSAT, go travel the world, or find some interesting gig so that you have something interesting to talk about down the road. No legal employer will ever ask you about your BA because it's almost like the minimum requirement to get into law school. Just like no one's going to care about what you did back in junior high. 

[Chewy]

25 minutes ago, Zarathustra said:

Just like no one's going to care about what you did back in junior high. 

Edited December 21, 2022 by Chewy

[ZooBoingKnight]

@CleanHands, you seem very confident, but you didn’t support your answer. That’s not a helpful sort of reply. Nonetheless, thank you for responding.

[ZooBoingKnight]

So most people are implying that two degrees are the same as one; it’s all just undergrad. I have two concerns about the value of undergraduate degrees:

First, if most legal employers hardly care about your undergraduate degree, then this implies that they hardly see any use for your knowledge from undergrad. Would you agree with this? This implies that a business law employer wouldn’t differentiate between someone who studied economics and someone who studied dance, which seems rather absurd. 

Second, a related concern is whether your undergraduate knowledge is useful, even if we assume that most employers don’t care about it. It’s hard to believe that many years of learning provide nearly worthless knowledge. Wouldn’t you say that you use knowledge from your undergraduate degrees in some significant way, shape, or form? If your undergraduate education barely helps you in law, then what does make the biggest difference to your abilities in work?

[OzLaw16]

2 minutes ago, ZooBoingKnight said:

First, if most legal employers hardly care about your undergraduate degree, then this implies that they hardly see any use for your knowledge from undergrad. Would you agree with this? This implies that a business law employer wouldn’t differentiate between someone who studied economics and someone who studied dance, which seems rather absurd. 

None of the replies to this thread have said that employers don't care about your undergraduate degree - they've all said (or suggested) that employers don't care about whether you get one Bachelor of Arts or two. My Bachelor of Business Administration definitely came up a few times when I applied to corporate firms.

A business law employer would likely differentiate between an economics major and a dance major (all else being equal - factors like work experience and law school grades will almost certainly take priority), but they're very unlikely to differentiate between an English major and a philosophy major, considering neither of those fields have much applicability to corporate law work.

8 minutes ago, ZooBoingKnight said:

Second, a related concern is whether your undergraduate knowledge is useful, even if we assume that most employers don’t care about it. It’s hard to believe that many years of learning provide nearly worthless knowledge. Wouldn’t you say that you use knowledge from your undergraduate degrees in some significant way, shape, or form? If your undergraduate education barely helps you in law, then what does make the biggest difference to your abilities in work?

Outside of the Intro to Business Law course I took in my undergrad, I'd say I use very little of the substantive knowledge I learned in undergrad during my corporate law job. Becoming familiar with a bunch of high-level business/corporate terminology maybe gave me a slight leg up when it came to learning about various types of corporate law work, but that's pretty much where the overlap ends. I know this seems contradictory to my first answer, but based on my personal experiences so far, it seems like corporate firms think having a business degree is more useful to their work than it actually is.

[BlockedQuebecois]

I will never understand why students come in here asking questions and then reject the answers they get. It’s arrogant and insufferable. 

But yes, I can confirm that as someone who participates in my firm’s recruitment process that we don’t care about your undergraduate “knowledge”. We retain experts when we have economics or linguistic problems—we don’t hang out hat on the opinion of someone with a BA that hasn’t thought about the field for, at a minimum, three years. 

To the extent knowledge from an undergraduate is transferable and useful to practice (which is pretty limited), it’s highly unlikely that the few additional courses you’re inquiring about are going to make a meaningful difference.

Edited December 22, 2022 by BlockedQuebecois

[Yogurt Baron]

12 minutes ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

I will never understand why students come in here asking questions and then reject the answers they get.

Hey, some of us have personality disorders, okay?

[Zarathustra]

Legal employers will place more weight on your grades, involvement in law school i.e. clubs, moot, competitions, etc., your summer positions, and the types of courses you took in law school. There are plenty of dance/music majors who are thriving in the corporate law world because of their stellar grades and their involvement during law school.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Zarathustra

[ZukoJD]

As frustrating as it is, I did 5 years of undergrad—double major and a minor—and the LSAT probably prepared me more for law school and legal work than the entirety of my studies.

Even the kind of writing I did in social sciences/humanities was really not that useful for legal writing. Legal writing is a bit of a different ball game. I remember doing poorly on my first law school paper in part because I was still writing as if I were writing an undergrad English paper. 

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by ZukoJD

[CleanHands]

1 hour ago, ZooBoingKnight said:

@CleanHands, you seem very confident, but you didn’t support your answer. That’s not a helpful sort of reply. Nonetheless, thank you for responding.

The answer is so obvious to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the legal field that it doesn't require "support." This is also why I am "very confident" about my response.

But if you don't want the obvious but "unsupported" answer for free, you can go commission your own empirical study. That is, if not for the fact that you already know everything.

[Ryn]

As someone who also was involved in the hiring process at my firm, I can confirm, as well, that we would not have cared about about an additional undergrad or additional courses beyond what it took to graduate. I will also add that there would be no way for us know what courses you took on top of your program unless you told us, and I certainly would not waste any words on pointing that out in my cover letter.

We were far more interested in your performance in law school and, to the extent you had anything that might be transferrable to law, work experience. But grades matter the most, and of course how well you interview.

[Jaggers]

I did usually flip to the undergrad transcript to see if there was anything interesting that would open up an avenue of discussion if the interview got too slow, but that's about the extent of what I used it for. And no, a business degree doesn't generally prepare you better to be a lawyer in a big firm than almost any other degree. You may learn a few things that will eventually be useful, but that's completely outweighed by what you've learned in law school, and will learn in articling and your first five minutes of practice.

1 hour ago, Ryn said:

We were far more interested in your performance in law school and, to the extent you had anything that might be transferrable to law, work experience. But grades matter the most, and of course how well you interview.

I recently saw a young female bartender kick three burly men out of her bar without any drama, and thought she would make a great management side labour lawyer.

She blamed management in a way they totally accepted, which was the kicker for me 🙂

And no, she did not let them speak to, see, or otherwise know if said "management" was actually anywhere around the premises.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Jaggers

[ZooBoingKnight]

3 hours ago, OzLaw16 said:

None of the replies to this thread have said that employers don't care about your undergraduate degree - they've all said (or suggested) that employers don't care about whether you get one Bachelor of Arts or two.

Come to think of it, I don’t know if some of the initial posters believed that employers don’t care about one’s undergraduate degree. However, Zarathustra was definitely getting at that. And Chewy just quoted part of Zarathustra’s response, so I took that as agreement.

 

3 hours ago, OzLaw16 said:

Outside of the Intro to Business Law course I took in my undergrad, I'd say I use very little of the substantive knowledge I learned in undergrad during my corporate law job. Becoming familiar with a bunch of high-level business/corporate terminology maybe gave me a slight leg up when it came to learning about various types of corporate law work, but that's pretty much where the overlap ends. I know this seems contradictory to my first answer, but based on my personal experiences so far, it seems like corporate firms think having a business degree is more useful to their work than it actually is.

This is particularly relevant to me. In economics, we’re learning some legally-relevant concepts, like adverse selection, moral hazard, principal-agent problems, etc. My hope is that rigorously learning these concepts now will be useful later. Can you please explain more about how learning similar concepts was or was not useful for you later in corporate law?

Also, another hope of mine is that learning economics will be generally useful in business law. I hope that learning economics will provide a reasonable foundation for understanding business generally. I hope that it’ll provide reasonably good answers to relevant questions like how do businesses function? How does the economy affect businesses? Why do most businesses go to court? These sorts of things. I also hope that learning economics will help me communicate within the business community. Can you please share your input about how learning business does or does not help with understanding business generally and communicating within the business community?

[ZooBoingKnight]

4 hours ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

I will never understand why students come in here asking questions and then reject the answers they get. It’s arrogant and insufferable. 

I’m not rejecting answers. That’s just your own interpretation. (Frankly, I think it’s rather over-dramatic.) I’m just having normal conversations. You think that it’s arrogant and insufferable. Fine, well, I find it obsequious and stupid to passively accept everything one’s “superiors” tell them. 

Edited December 22, 2022 by ZooBoingKnight

[ZooBoingKnight]

3 hours ago, Zarathustra said:

Legal employers will place more weight on your grades, involvement in law school i.e. clubs, moot, competitions, etc., your summer positions, and the types of courses you took in law school. There are plenty of dance/music majors who are thriving in the corporate law world because of their stellar grades and their involvement during law school.

I see what you’re saying. Even if someone takes somewhat relevant subjects in undergrad—like economics rather than dance—law school grades, involvement in extra-curriculars, internships, and law school courses are still much more important. 

Thank you for your input.

[Ramesses]

As someone with too much education before law school it does not matter unless it is in a related field. I.e. you studied engineering and are interested in mining or oil and gas. 

Edited December 22, 2022 by Ramesses

[ZooBoingKnight]

3 hours ago, CleanHands said:

The answer is so obvious to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the legal field that it doesn't require "support." This is also why I am "very confident" about my response.

But if you don't want the obvious but "unsupported" answer for free, you can go commission your own empirical study. That is, if not for the fact that you already know everything.

Why is it obvious? There are so many reasons why employers might not care about me getting 2 BAs rather than 1. Do they just not care about multiple BAs? Do they not care because of the particular things I studied? Do they not care because my law school grades are only important? 

You do understand that you’re just some (ill-mannered) dude on the internet, right? Giving an unsupported answer is like some random dude telling me that I’ll get hurt if I cross the street, then providing no further explanation. Like, uhh, can I get some justification please?

[GGrievous]

1 hour ago, ZooBoingKnight said:

You do understand that you’re just some (ill-mannered) dude on the internet, right? Giving an unsupported answer is like some random dude telling me that I’ll get hurt if I cross the street, then providing no further explanation. Like, uhh, can I get some justification please?

He's actually an ill-mannered lawyer on the internet so it's more like a professional crossing guard telling you you'll get hurt.

[LMP]

1 hour ago, ZooBoingKnight said:

Why is it obvious? There are so many reasons why employers might not care about me getting 2 BAs rather than 1. Do they just not care about multiple BAs? Do they not care because of the particular things I studied? Do they not care because my law school grades are only important? 

You do understand that you’re just some (ill-mannered) dude on the internet, right? Giving an unsupported answer is like some random dude telling me that I’ll get hurt if I cross the street, then providing no further explanation. Like, uhh, can I get some justification please?

You're free to disregard advice that you feel is incorrect or unsupported. But when you post a question and someone (especially a lawyer) takes the time to answer, I'd reccomend being more considerate in your response. 

This isn't an attack on you, it is legitimate advice for getting the most out of the forum. Like I said, you don't have to listen to everyone, but what do you gain by arguing? Nothing!  

You're far better off ignoring advice you feel is wrong and following up on advice you think is incomplete. 

This way you get to read a variety of views on your question and avoid coming off as a know-it-all applicant (a not uncommon sight around here). 

[Rashabon]

Economics is only relevant to competition law because the leading legal theories of competition law are based on economics arguments. It’s useless to every other form of corporate work.

Undergraduate knowledge is mostly useless outside of being an anecdote to chat about. The only people that tend to rely on/benefit from their pre-law school education are people doing IP work that have masters and PhDs. Law is law. You learn it on the job and a bit in school.

Nobody cares about two BAs because it’s not law. To be a lawyer, what do you do in law school is paramount. I don’t think I could tell you what more than a couple people in my group studied before law school.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Rashabon

[KOMODO]

Two BAs would seem like a negative to me. I would think, why couldn't this person get it done in one? Are they indecisive, and if so, why did they pick something so similar the second time around? Did they need a second chance to improve their grades, and if so, is there a good reason they were low in the first place? It definitely would not be a positive in my view.

I also think there is virtually nothing academic you can do during undergrad that will give you a leg up in biglaw practice or hiring, other than achieving excellent grades. We don't care what you think you know about economics or philosophy or whatever else, we're going to teach you how to practice law, and your prior knowledge from undergrad (and even law school for the most part) is irrelevant. If I need to understand something related to economics (which by the way, has never happened), I'm going to consult an economist, not an articling student with a minor from five years ago. I would also argue that someone who came from a dance background has a more interesting story than a run of the mill english/philosophy major, so they may actually have a better chance of getting hired (all other things being equal). If you want to improve your hiring chances during undergrad, focus on your grades and perhaps get an interesting part-time job, as prior work experience is valuable.

Source: I am a bay street lawyer, with a corporate/transactional practice (I focus on commercial real estate), have been practicing for a decently long time now, and I regularly participate in student and associate hiring decisions.