9
Should You Consider a Career in Law or Criminal Justice?
One of the most eye-opening experiences of my (Shaun's) life was sitting for five weeks on a District of Columbia grand jury, hearing testimony for over fifty felony cases, including fifteen homicides. It was depressing and harrowing, yet it provided a rare look inside the criminal justice system of a major urban area. I learned that most prosecutors work weekends to keep up with their never-ending caseloads and that murder cases can drag on for years before an indictment, much less an actual trial. I sat aghast as a convicted murderer described how his entire neighborhood used technology like Facebook to quickly spread the word that he was testifying against another member of the neighborhood, so he would now be marked for death if he ever returned. I learned that most cases depend on old-fashioned eyewitness accounts, grainy video camera footage without magical zoom-in capabilities, and basic detective work, not ingenious crime scene investigators or eccentric computer hackers. I learned that it can take months to get fingerprint or DNA results and the important difference between concepts like “probable cause” and “beyond a reasonable doubt.” And I witnessed an endless cycle of crime poisoning a community with heartbreaking poverty, unemployment, incarceration, absent parents, drugs, and fear. Serving on a jury isn't like it's made out to be in the movies.
Few other career fields capture the public imagination more than law and criminal justice. Every month it seems that there is a new television series featuring a troubled but clever detective, a scrappy prosecutor, an elusive criminal, a brilliant CSI tech, or an irritated judge fed up with yet another objection. These tropes never seem to get old, and even if they do, we consume them anyway like good comfort food. But they may also do a disservice by misleading young people who are considering a career in law or criminal justice.
In this chapter we discuss some of the differences between the myths and realities of these career fields and expose you and your teen to a broader world of opportunities than what you may have seen on TV and in the movies. We look at criminal justice first, both with respect to work as a lawyer and other careers such as police officer, corrections officer, detective, or crime scene investigator. Then we discuss law as a career outside criminal justice, such as corporate, environmental, and family law.
Criminal Justice
There are many pathways into a criminal justice career and many ways to move from one part of the field to the other, so your teen does not need to have everything figured out ahead of time before choosing an entry point. A police officer can become a detective, go back to school and get a law degree, or move into corporate security. A military police officer can transition to civilian law enforcement and join a SWAT team. A prosecutor can become a private defense attorney, go to work for a large law firm, or run for public office. And all of these individuals could take a lot of their skills and use them to transition into civilian careers in business or self-employment.
Police and Investigative Work
Most entry-level careers in policing or corrections require some education beyond high school such as a certificate program, an associate degree, or graduation from a police department's law enforcement academy. A certificate program covers topics such as basic criminology, the laws and procedures of the criminal justice system, and the foundations of corrections practices and procedures. A two-year associate degree program also covers a more detailed survey of various types of crime, policing strategy and techniques, and the basics of handling a crime scene.
Those who complete a certificate or associate degree program or a law enforcement academy can then apply for a specific policing or corrections position and most likely need to pass a law enforcement exam. If they have done well in their studies, the exam should be very manageable with a bit of preparation. They also need to pass a physical exam, which may require them to do things like simulate running after a suspect on foot for seventy-five yards, complete push-ups and sit-ups in a certain amount of time, and complete a longer endurance run within a specific time limit. We hope this is obvious, but prior to being offered a law enforcement job, your child will also be subject to comprehensive criminal background checks and a drug test.
Kids who are thinking about police or investigative work but want a wider range of options can complete a bachelor's degree program, which will add subjects such as police ethics, emergency management, and more advanced study of police methods like intelligence gathering. Entry-level federal jobs in Homeland Security such as a border patrol agent, FBI agent, CIA analyst, or specialized government policing jobs such as wildlife and game officer require a minimum of a bachelor's degree. Students who cannot afford a bachelor's degree program or want to get to work sooner can always start with an associate degree, work for a few years, and then go back to earn their bachelor's degree. Having work experience can give them an advantage in job hunting once they complete their four-year degree. However, it's important to spend some time investigating specific bachelor's degree programs and making sure that the credits from the associate degree program they select are guaranteed to transfer to the bachelor's degree programs they might choose later. (We discuss this more in chapter 14.)
Your teen might be surprised to learn that there are other degree types besides criminal justice that can lead to an interesting career in law enforcement. Two of the most important areas in law enforcement with promising growth opportunities are accounting and information technology. Financial crime and cybercrime have grown as the finance industry has become more complex and networked computer systems have become central to almost every business, so these skills are in high demand and will likely lead to better pay than more traditional policing and investigator roles. Kids who have an interest in both law enforcement and business or law enforcement and computer technology could get a bachelor's degree in accounting or information technology and be well positioned for either career path. They could also try taking a few classes in criminal justice and then either do a double major or select their chosen field a bit later in college.
There are some common misconceptions about police work that you can discuss with your teen. First, success as a police officer is not all about physical strength or facing down danger. Day-to-day police work involves much more than chasing bad guys; in fact, most police officers never have to use deadly force during their entire career. Police work requires a lot of mental and social/emotional attributes like the ability to communicate well with members of the community, effective teamwork with other officers and detectives, a solid knowledge of laws and regulations, and the patience to follow procedure and provide complete, well-written reports. There are specialized teams that do more dramatic work such as conducting raids or responding to hostage situations, but these are a small part of a much larger police force, and entry into these teams is based on prior work experience or military experience that naturally screens out anyone not well suited to those tasks. Another misconception is that police work is primarily a male occupation or that female police officers have only limited roles. Women have just as many opportunities as men within both police work and corrections, including everything from the traditional patrol officer or detective, to specialized roles that require more sensitivity, such as domestic violence or sexual abuse investigators.
Detectives
What if your child dreams of being a homicide detective, carefully following clues, interrogating suspects, and getting bad guys off the streets? There are a few things to consider. First, these detectives need to be part of a larger police force, usually in an urban area, so there are enough homicide detective positions available to have a reasonable chance at earning one. Second, the typical pathway to homicide detective is by spending at least several years as a patrol officer and likely much more than that. It could be ten years before these officers finally get a detective position, and it's not usually homicide at first. They might have to serve as a detective on burglary, robbery, assault, sex offense, drug, or auto theft cases before getting a rotation into homicide. Also, homicide is generally the most coveted detective position, so a great track record as a patrol officer, which is as much about teamwork, thoroughness, and attitude as it is about how many arrests made or the ability to run down a fast suspect on foot, helps. Even for those who turn out to have exceptional investigative talents, the reality of job assignments in a police department is not much different from the reality within many other career fields. Office politics, personality, and favoritism can trump job performance when it comes time to appoint a new homicide detective. If this is truly your teen's dream, she should try to find a detective or two for informational interviewing, as we discuss in chapter 10, and get some advice on the best way to conduct a patrol officer career to position herself for promotion to detective, in addition to learning more about the realities of the job.
In some communities, fluency in languages other than English could increase the likelihood of making homicide detective and accelerate the time line. Your teen should understand that homicide detective work is not like what is typically portrayed on television. Prosecutors refer to this as the “CSI effect,” which leads many jury members to expect a lot of forensic evidence in every murder case. The reality in many murder cases is that there may be a lot of evidence showing that someone was murdered but very little to prove beyond a reasonable doubt who did it. Detectives can spend endless hours following up on old-fashioned leads like eyewitnesses, only to discover that they refuse to talk or give conflicting accounts. Forensic evidence may often be enough to put a suspect near a murder scene or establish a motive, but not enough for conviction, and it can sometimes take up to six months to get fingerprint or DNA evidence returned from a lab.
Detective work is more likely to involve conversations with many people, tedious hours of searching through phone records, and writing reports for prosecutors than having a Netflix-worthy lightning bolt of intuition. Finally, television often gives the impression that detectives get to spend all their time diligently working through a single case. In fact, being a detective is like a lot of other jobs where you get a bunch of projects piled on your plate and your boss is breathing down your neck to get them done. Detectives are measured by their productivity in closing cases and they are busy working multiple cases at once.
Crime Scene Investigation and Forensics
Crime scene investigation (CSI) and forensic science have experienced an increase in popularity, fueled by the proliferation of television shows and movies featuring brainy technicians and scientists who find the big break to solve a case. Crime scene investigators are technicians who specialize in carefully collecting evidence from a crime scene, whereas forensic scientists typically work in a laboratory setting and conduct their work after evidence has been collected.
Preparation for crime scene technician and investigator jobs does not require intensive science training. CSI education is mostly learning about collection techniques, procedures for gathering and storing evidence, and general criminal justice topics. Some law enforcement academies provide specialized CSI training for entry-level positions, so the path can be from high school, to the police academy, and into a CSI tech job. There are also one-year CSI certificate programs as well as associate and bachelor's degree programs that offer CSI specializations, which can lead to higher-paying CSI roles. Exceptional students in a four-year degree program can apply for CSI internships at places like the CIA, the Secret Service, and the Federal Law Enforcement Center, which provide elite-level training.
Teens who are more interested in laboratory and scientific work should explore forensic science, which involves conducting tests on evidence after it has already been removed from the crime scene. Becoming a forensic scientist likely requires a four-year degree in a subject like biology, chemistry, toxicology, pharmacology, or physics (see chapter 4 for more on STEM degrees). Because of how frequently these careers are portrayed on television, we strongly suggest that your teen try to speak with someone practicing as a CSI or forensic scientist to get a better sense of the actual experience and responsibilities. A common misconception is that a CSI or forensic scientist is involved in the whole criminal investigation, possibly even interrogating suspects, making arrests, or doing other police work. In reality, these roles are limited to specific technical aspects of the case, while other investigators do the rest of the detective work. Forensic science, for example, can involve long hours of tedious laboratory work, which is more akin to quiet scientific research under fluorescent lights and not a fast-paced investigation with a friendly team of investigators popping by to chat.
Another common TV portrayal is that forensic work provides rapid results that identify the exact person responsible for the crime along with a name, photo, and address where the person can be arrested immediately. In reality, lab results can take days or months depending on the urgency or type of case. Also, not all criminals' fingerprints or DNA are in a database, and many cases may have either too little forensic evidence or contaminated evidence that is not conclusive enough to remove reasonable doubt. Forensic scientists are also conducting so many tests on a regular basis that they often do not even learn the final outcome of a case, so they can feel very disconnected from the thrill of justice that might have originally drawn them to the field. That is not to say there is nothing exciting about this work. In one of Shaun's grand jury cases, a federal laboratory was going to recreate an entire apartment bedroom and set it on fire to determine whether a murder was the result of an arson or a physical assault. There is no doubt that that is a pretty cool job. As a general rule, though, practitioners are a lot more likely to get that kind of work as they increase their level of education (a bachelor's or master's degree) and work experience.
Criminal Law
All of the police work, detective investigations, CSI evidence collection, and forensic testing ultimately go nowhere without a prosecutor, a government attorney who must establish probable cause to indict a suspect and then either cut a deal with the defendant or ultimately present the case in front of a jury if it goes to trial and recommend a sentence if the defendant is convicted. Young people are often drawn to become prosecutors out of a desire to see justice done or in some cases as a path to become a judge or start a political career. On the other side of the case is the defense attorney, sometimes an overworked public defender and sometimes a private attorney (or many attorneys, depending on the case). People are often drawn to these defense roles for altruistic reasons, but they can also be appealing because certain kinds of defense attorneys can earn very large amounts of money. Corporate and white-collar criminal defense attorneys or litigators leading class action lawsuits against major corporations can earn millions, but despite what you see on television, defending murderers, drug dealers, and violent criminals is not typically a pathway to earning a lot of money.
Whether you are on the side of the government or working for the defense, there will be no getting around having a law degree. That means your child will need to earn a bachelor's degree from a four-year college, then take the LSAT (Harvard Law School now also accepts the GRE), and apply to law school. The field of law in general has gone through some significant changes recently, and law school enrollment is down due to fewer job opportunities overall than in decades past. There is a still a high bar, however, for admission to a top-quality law school, and your child will be competing against some of the most academically successful students from top liberal arts colleges and universities. Once your child completes law school and receives the JD degree, she will have to pass the bar exam for the state in which she intends to practice. In many cases, recent law school graduates can find a job that will allow them to start immediately and provide a probationary period during which they study for and pass the bar exam. It is an extensive and intense exam.
High-profile positions such as a homicide prosecutor in a big city or a federal white-collar crime prosecutor are highly competitive. The best and brightest out of law school are competing for these positions, so your child should expect to work extremely hard in school to achieve this goal. Prosecutors can earn good salaries, but nothing even close to those of high-end corporate attorneys, so this is not a career typically pursued for the money. The workload is often grueling, and these attorneys will be under intense public scrutiny. For this reason, many people go into this career with an assumption that they will put in a certain amount of time, establish their reputation, and then use their experience as a launch pad to other legal careers that are more lucrative (corporate) or have a better work/life balance (judge), or to a political career (legislator). All of these transitions depend on a strong work ethic, a good personal reputation, and a high level of achievement.
If your child ultimately aspires to be a judge, this will typically be a long road. Aspiring judges must first acquire experience practicing as a lawyer and build a good reputation. Then they need to submit their name to a judicial nominating commission or be recommended by someone in a prominent political position. Those who are successful in getting appointed then typically undergo some additional training provided by the state or federal government and serve as a judge for a specified term. Not all judicial appointments are permanent. Many expire after a certain period and judges must be reappointed or elected.
Noncriminal Law
Up to this point we have focused primarily on studying and practicing law in the context of criminal justice. However, there are many other ways to practice law—for example:
Maritime law (shipping, navigation)- Business law (contracts, litigation, mergers, tax, bankruptcy, international)
- Environmental law (regulatory compliance, litigation)
- Health care law (regulatory compliance, medical malpractice)
- Labor law (unions, discrimination, compensation)
- Intellectual property law (trademarks, copyrights, patents)
- Estate law (wills and trusts)
- Entertainment law (contracts, copyrights)
- Family law (divorce, custody, adoption)
Just like criminal justice law fields, all of these require completing a bachelor's degree at a four-year college, applying to law school, completing a law degree, and passing an intensive bar exam. Even if your child starts law school with the intent to practice criminal law, she can always change her mind and practice many other forms of law if criminal justice is not as appealing as she thought it would be. Those who pass the bar exam can practice any kind of law with their degree.
Law schools offer specializations or elective course work in many of these areas; other areas may require that lawyers develop expertise mostly on the job. If your child also has a strong interest in business or science and technology, there are excellent opportunities to combine academic study in these fields with a law degree to increase specialization and pursue jobs that may be in higher demand and offer greater pay. Patent law, for example, requires an inventor to prove that an invention is worthy of a patent on both legal and technical grounds, so a patent lawyer must have an excellent knowledge of the law but also the technical skills to understand the invention and assist the inventor with creating an adequate description for the U.S. Patent and Trade Office reviewers. Your child could combine an undergraduate degree in physics or computer science, for example, with a law degree and be well positioned to enter patent law. For students interested in business and law, specialized dual-degree programs allow a student to complete a JD and earn an MBA within a shorter period of time than if each was pursued separately. This provides excellent career flexibility since the business knowledge makes these students more valuable as corporate attorneys and increases the likelihood they can move from corporate law into business leadership positions like a CEO. There are plenty of examples in business of CEOs or senior corporate executives who started out as corporate lawyers.
Salaries for lawyers are generally good on average compared to other career fields and can be exceptionally high for those who work in specialized fields or are hired by the most prestigious private law firms or government lobbying firms.
Job prospects for entry-level positions, though, took a significant hit during the Great Recession and have not rebounded as quickly as some other career fields. For this reason, law school attendance is down from where it was a decade ago, and there are more new graduates with law degrees who have struggled to find entry-level positions. Job availability in some areas also depends heavily on government changes. The current presidential administration, for example, is pushing heavily to relax a lot of environmental regulation, which may lessen the need for corporations to retain environmental law expertise and slow demand for hiring in that field. The new administration is also dramatically changing the landscape for immigration, which can affect businesses as much as individuals, so immigration law may experience rapid growth.
Another trend affecting demand for legal services is computer automation and artificial intelligence. As we mentioned in chapter 7 on business careers, JPMorgan recently announced the rollout of new artificial intelligence software to interpret and review commercial loan agreements. This software can now do what loan officers and lawyers spent over 360,000 hours a year doing for JPMorgan previously. A fair amount of low-level legal work requires legal knowledge but does not require much advanced skill. If a job primarily involves being trained to understand a set of legal rules and then repeatedly using those rules to review, edit, or flag some issue in a written contract, computers can likely take over that task. In the coming decades, corporations and computer scientists will continue to collaborate on ways to automate these routine jobs.
For these reasons, it's important for your child to think about the kinds of knowledge and skills that will remain valuable over the long run in a legal career. This includes areas such as business skills, technology skills, scientific knowledge, and foreign languages. It also includes entrepreneurship. Many people have heard of Herb Kelleher, the charismatic CEO and cofounder of Southwest Airlines, the most consistently profitable airline in history. What they may not know is that Herb started out as a lawyer helping other companies incorporate, and the original founder of Southwest Airlines had approached him to help incorporate the new airline. Herb continued to keep his private law practice open for several years until finally being asked to take over as full-time CEO of Southwest.
Practicing law takes years of hard work and self-discipline, and it requires a keen analytical mind. These are all attributes of a successful entrepreneur and having legal expertise can be an invaluable asset and a money-saver for those who go into business for themselves. If your child is interested in both law and entrepreneurship, we strongly suggest you read chapter 7 on business.
Law School
About two hundred law schools in the United States are approved by the American Bar Association to confer a JD degree. Unlike undergraduate college, where there are thousands of options, the differences in quality and reputation of a law school can have a greater impact on career opportunities. Graduates from the top fifteen or so law schools are more likely to find entry-level employment at elite law firms or in highly coveted state and federal clerkships. And given the recent downturn in entry-level positions for law school graduates, a law degree from a more reputable law school could provide a material advantage. That does not mean that if your child attends a lower-ranked law school she will have trouble finding a job, but it does mean that she may want to give this more consideration than when choosing an undergraduate college. It also means that your child should think carefully about selecting an undergraduate college experience that is challenging but achievable.
No specific kind of undergraduate major is required to prepare for law school. Some four-year colleges offer a legal studies or prelaw degree, but there is no evidence that these majors or a criminal justice major provide any advantage when applying to law school. As your teen contemplates what he will study, he should consider a major that will be interesting enough to motivate him to study hard and get excellent grades. Another consideration is a major that will challenge him to develop critical thinking skills and an ability to articulate and defend strong intellectual arguments. Majors that require a lot of reading, writing, and critical argument will likely be more helpful. Common choices are English, history, political science, economics, journalism, philosophy, and business.
Before we finish the topic of law school, it is worth noting a couple of things that can be disconcerting to young people who have worked hard to reach law school, especially if they are focused on criminal justice. First, law is amoral. That means that the law is a set of agreed-on rules written by legislators and interpreted by judges, not a moral code. Morality and legality are two different concepts. Whether someone is prosecuted and convicted of a crime is not about our personal moral sense of right and wrong. It is about whether the words we have agreed on as law can be interpreted clearly to mean that a person should legally be prosecuted. This can be jarring to those who entered law school inspired by moral conviction. Sometimes bad people get away with their crimes because laws are poorly written, incomplete, or extremely specific in their conditions for guilt. Second, law school does not teach many of the practical skills of a working lawyer. Much of what law students study is theoretical in nature. The skills for day-to-day work in law, such as filing briefs, drafting contracts, deciding whether to prosecute, cross-examining witnesses, and making closing arguments to a jury, are usually learned on the job. Some large corporate law firms have established their own internal education programs to teach their newly hired associates how to do real-world legal work. Of course, there are other career fields where a lot of knowledge comes from on-the-job experience, but it's helpful if those who aspire to a legal career go in with their eyes open about it because it requires an intense amount of academic preparation (and expense) only to show up the first day of your job and discover that they don't know a lot about how to actually do the practical work.
The men and women working in criminal justice today are some of the most hard-working and dedicated public servants in our society. Criminal justice or law careers can be fulfilling and sometimes provide surprising opportunities to directly improve the lives of others. Law provides much of the foundation of our democratic society and our free-market economy and will always be an important career that is in demand. We hope that by discussing the topics we have covered in this chapter, you can give your child a better chance at finding the kind of law or criminal justice career that will be both fulfilling personally and meet his financial goals in life.
Sample Earnings Outlook
Following is a sample of 2015 median annual earnings for various jobs in criminal justice and law according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
- Paralegal: $48,810
- Lawyer: $115,820
- Judge: $109, 010
- Correctional officer: $40,580
- Police officer/detective: $60,270
- Security guard: $24,680
For wage information on other careers in the field not listed here, and for more detailed local wage information or job prospects, we recommend using the online Occupational Outlook Handbook provided free by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/home.htm.
Keep in mind that we are showing median pay, so some people in these roles may earn substantially less and others may earn substantially more. Generally pay is higher in locations where the cost of living is higher and in fields that are growing more rapidly or that require more specialization and experience. In addition to using the Occupational Outlook Handbook website, we recommend that your child conduct an Internet search using terms like “future job prospects for [career name],” to get the most current outlook on industry growth potential.