Thank you all - I really appreciate your responses!
A little more background on the kid and her current path...
She's in the honors college at her school, in a program that focuses on a lot of ancient civilizations' philosophy, texts, art, etc. She's been taking Latin and now Ancient Greek since 7th grade. Her passion really seems to be for dead languages and civilizations that aren't around any more.
To that end, she has identified Antiquities Law as something that really appeals to her. Arguing to keep people from taking old things out of other countries, or arguing why people should be allowed to bring things in from other countries.
I know that law school - like any other grad school - is going to be really competitive. She's currently got a 3.70 in her honors college, which isn't bad. I've let her know that the median undergrad GPAs for the "top 14" law schools are moreso in the 3.80-3.90 range. I'm not sure what kind of bump, if any, having a 3.70 in HC will have, versus a kid with a 3.9 in Criminal Justice. I'm pretty comfortable that she'll do well on the LSAT. What I was wondering, is the impact of internships as a means to a) learn more about the reality of the profession, and b) separate her application from other similar students.
Again, thank you all!
She sounds like a winner - my son really was split between classics and aerospace, and went with the latter, but still reads at least one Latin work a year.
Re: internships -- particularly in light of her current interest, the chief value will be in (a). There will be plenty of applicants to law school who will have worked in one capacity or another in some sort of legal environment (pretty common to see people dip their toe in with a year or two of paralegal work). With that said, given her unique interests and skill sets, it might be worth some very focused research on lawyers that do these kinds of cases to see if there is any need for a basic researcher.
As to her interest, that's a fascinating one! But a word on curriculum - first year of law school is "cocktail party law" and generally a fixed curriculum, second year will have things in it that make you a lawyer (evidence, a statutory course like tax, trial advocacy, trusts and estates, etc., but with a smattering of more elective matters, and third year will be lots of flexibility around electives. Fundamentally, the things she will want to consider will include stuff like property (including IP) and international law courses. Re schools - obviously, apply to the best schools you can, but also consider looking at schools like GW, American, Catholic, William & Mary, or George Mason. They're all very solid and provide good pathways in DC, without being so-called "elite" like Georgetown or UVA. But more importantly, because of their proximity to government, you might find that they offer some quirky courses or independent study opportunities that address some of the specific things she's interested in. They may also be big enough to offer courses in other departments of the university which could be worked into a course of study.
From a career pathway perspective, it's an extremely specialized field that will separate itself largely into "public international law" jobs and "private international law jobs". The former will focus heavily on treaties, intergovernmental relations, etc. Probably the cooler of the two, but likely to require a career commitment. I almost took a step down a similar public path after law school - actually interviewed with DOJ's Nazi-hunting unit as I had a Russian language background and at the time there was rudimentary information sharing between us and the Soviets. With respect to the private side, you are likely talking about a specialty that spins off of representing rich people, their agents, their charities, their charities, etc. so likely a heavy emphasis on tax, estates work, and the like. Those types of jobs can be a really nice career life-path -- as a colleague who did that once said to me, "when you're young, you play a lot of golf and get your clients, and then you just wait for them to ripen."
I suppose there's an interesting third pathway given her interests in matters classical, but of course it's heavily dependent on your religious background -- Canon Law.
But at the end of the day, it's important that if she goes to law school, to keep an open mind. There are so many practice areas out there, and more often than not, you stumble into "your" field by accident. I was going to be a government contracts attorney, and the guys I interviewed with left the firm the day I first showed up. At that point there was a guy who was trying to turn me into an ERISA attorney reviewing union benefit fund investments (for which I would have been profoundly miscast) but he left to become the first head of RTC, and eventually a partner here told me to learn "this new drug pricing law" that was enacted in 1990 (which sounded better than ERISA). I've been doing drug pricing stuff ever since.
