There are many ways that teachers in elementary, middle and high schools can help students prepare for a legal career:

• Discuss character and fitness, classes and activities they may be interested in taking or doing to help prepare for a life in the law.
• Encourage reading about political and legal figures in history or in the news today. Encourage inviting a lawyer to the classroom (list discussing topics)
• Encourage exercises to develop critical thinking skills and problem solving, as well as oral advocacy

Offer course list for classes and activities that may help prepare a student for law school:

• Creative Writing
• Speech and Debate 
• High School Mock Trial involvement 
• Constitutional Rights Foundation Youth Programs 
• Social Studies and current events 
• Library science of Illinois and U.S. Constitution 
• U.S. History 
• Political Science 
• Theater 
• Peer mediation and conflict resolution skills development
• Business and bookkeeping
• Pre-law courses 
• Government

Here are other ways that a parent or teacher can help a student prepare for a legal career:

• Stress good grades as well as extra-curricular activities.
• Encourage trips to courthouses, law libraries, law offices, and government offices 
• Invite a lawyer to the classroom to discuss current events issues or other topics of interest to students. 
• Stress the importance of developing effective study skills.
• Watch lawyers and judges in film. 
• Suggest that students watch films or television shows depicting lawyers, judges, law-related situations. This can familiarize them with terminology, responsibilities, job requirements and the stresses and rewards. 
• Visit a law school campus. See what a law classroom is like. Meet some law students.
• Encourage students to attend a law camp in your area, if possible.

Suggested reading:

• A Civil Action, by Jonathan Harr
• Anatomy of a Murder, by Robert Traver 
• Billy Budd, by Herman Melville 
• Bleak House and The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens 
• Gideon's Trumpet, by Anthony Lewis 
• Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo 
• Looking at Law School, by Stephen Gillers 
• One-L, by Scott Turow 
• The Bramble Bush, by Karl N. Llewellyn 
• The Paper Chase, by John Osborne Jr. 
• To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt         
• The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
• The Legacy, by James Michener 
• Various books by John Grisham 
• Biographies:
  • Abe Fortas 
  • Abraham Lincoln 
  • Clarence Darrow 
  • John Marshall
  • Myra Bradwell 
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
  • Robert Kennedy 
  • Thurgood Marshall 
  • William Jennings Bryan

Other helpful information for teachers:

If you have a student in your classroom who is expressing interest in a career in the law, here are a few topics and resources you may wish to use:

For a brief description of what a lawyer does, use A. Lincoln as example: http://www.isba.org/Sections/becoming%20a%20lawyer.pdf

• ISBA has a Lincoln coloring book available for younger students: http://www.isba.org/lre/coloringbook.pdf

• Provide link to the ABA where the fairy tale mock trial scripts are available for purchase:  http://www.abanet.org/publiced/mocktrials.html

To download the full Becoming a Lawyer Booklet, please click here.