So you want to be a lawyer. Well, your shot is better than ever. I'll put it in steps from beginning to end.
get good grades, get a good score on SAT, do extra curriculars liks sports and volunteering. Get any state scholarships and federal grants. Nothing special at this point other than CLEP may be covered by your state, AP classes may give you college credit, taking 2-4 years of a foreign language in high school may give you credit and that class may be hard in college.
Don't get arrested, don't get tickets over $200, keep your credit in good shape, if you have a professional license keep it in good standing, don't get kicked out of any schools. I can't gaurantee any of this will exclude you from law schools but it's best to avoid it as they're competitive. Different schools have different criteria, honesty is the most important element.
Try to finish college as fast as possible while getting straight A's. CLEP hard subjects for you, for me math and foreign languages cost me GPA points. Community college in a state you are a resident of vill save you money, it may be cheaper than the PELL grant. Online classes allow studying on your time, you can get a part time job to save all your cash. GPA is a big part of law school. If you want to get into a prestigious law school, it might help if your community college is local to it (ie a Boston community college if you want to go to Harvard.)
Things have improved since I started long ago, Pell Grants are $7395/yr and tuition at my local community college is still $103/credit hour. Federal Financial aid for an independant student is $9500 (freshman), $10,500 (sophomore), $12,500 (junior/senior), the key is to keep your expenses at zero (live with parents, even if you're over 25; only move out when you have a million dollar verdict on a case) and try to get part time work. Minimum wage in my state is $14/hr and I knew high school kids earning $20/hr from the grocery store or other store job. In my experience, jobs with decent hourly give less hours and hire more workers; but that's another story. If you can get 20 hours a week, that's $15,000 a year which means no federal income tax obligation. Pell grants that didn't go towards school tuition or "school expenses" (books, and other expenses that can be related to school) can result in a tax obligation on that money. I think they should change the way they treat 'dependant' and 'independent' student applications because they assume an 18 year old has parents paying; many don't. If under 25, you can still qualify for independent status by: getting married, having a kid, becoming emancipated before turning 18, having parents that don't earn above a certain amount, ask a financial aid advisor how to qualify. I was over 25 when I started college, but at 18 my mom's income was low and I may have qualified. When you get to law school, financial aid is capped at $50k/yr now but schools have scholarships and grants and there's outside grants. My advice is unless you can get into Harvard or another top 20 law school, just go for the cheapest one and save every penny you receive. A house is expensive (or live at home forever, I'd love to tell a judge asking if I can handle the financial burden of complex litigation and replying 'I live with my parents, I have very low cost of living' though I probably wouldn't, starting a practice is expensive, learn how to be thrifty. If you ever lose a scholarship, you can always pay out of savings; though it's best to seek outside scholarships.
Once you have your AA you can apply for bachelors programs, it's best if a community college offers them as they're more cost effective and often better structure than Universities. If a community college offers an accredited bachelors program you are better off as it gives a better shot at a 4.0. If your undergraduate school has a trial team, competing on it may give a scholarship to law school (by the law school, even if the trial team itself doesn't offer one.)
I didn't take the traditional route of LSAT study, I was forced to learn how to write a lawsuit and in the process learned the logic needed to function as a lawyer. You can do daily logic games (not as fun as it sounds), blitz chess might help with the underlying speed and logic. The only area that dinged me was I had to guess on 3 questions because they were so long I skipped them and came back and punched in an answer. I did 2 official practice tests and each test increased by 2-3 points. Apply for fee waiver before signing up for the test, it may save you $200 on LSAT, $215 on CAS, aplication fees, report fees.
They may have school scholarships even full rides for just a 3.5 gpa and a 150-160 LSAT for a community minded school, and 3.95 gpa and 170 LSAT for an Ivy league school. Nationwide, there's many schools that demand 39 and a 165+ for high tuition; I'd only do that if I got a scholarship personally (unless it's a name that opens doors, most schools it's 'you have an accredited degree.') Grad plus loans are discontinued and federal aid is now capped at $267,000 lifetime ($50k/yr.) If you get in, expect 3-4 years of focusing on school (after the last 3-4 years of focusing on school, to be followed by time focusing on passing the bar.) It's hard, you have lots of competition and grading curves are closer to 1970's harsh curves "limiting percentage of A's" and not like modern friendly curves "if the highest grade is 95%, the class is bumped 5%." The 2 things I wish I knew when I first considered law school are that they mainly consider your uGPA (not your masters) and how grad plus loans work. I thought it was far more restrictive and didn't sign up when I could have the first time, the only thing I wasn't ready for was the LSAT at that time and probably could have gotten up to speed.
Your final semester of law school may offer bar prep (possibly as an added fee not for credit), take it; you may even get a discount for signing up for the bar exam early. If you pass the exam and have a decent character and fitness, as long as you give a decent interview you should be admitted. Protect it with your life, professional licenses are too easily attacked.
It's always interesting to see what people practice, if you know a lawyer in a particular area (especially one of interest to you) ask what attracted them to their field. Here's my thoughts on various fields, you may agree or disagree; if I hate a field and you love it then you may disagree with my findings on that field.
Criminal lawOn the one hand, this is often the worst people on their best behavior. The best case scenario is your clients are willing to take fair plea deals, and prosecutors are willing to give them; it helps if you used to be a prosecutor. Most criminal defense attorneys if they're being candid will say most of their clients are likely guilty of the crime they're accused of and/or other crimes. If someone were a truly innocent person (not guilty of the crime they're accused of or any other crime) that would be a lot of pressure. Most criminal cases the client doesn't have much money, if you're not paid by the state then you're looking at them getting a relative to mortgage their house. The plus side is that they need to convict them beyond reasonable doubt, that's a high burden; but the state wins 80-90%+ of cases.
Family lawunlike criminal law, family law is the best people on their worst behavior. There's a lot of dishonesty going on, people will lie about people they once loved to get negotiation leverage or custody; sometimes the other party is as bad as they say; but other times it's a travesty.
Plaintiff litigators This is the lawyer that sues in civil court. The plus side is you can make a lot more than your hourly rate, there are lawyers who made tens or even hundreds of millions in a case that didn't take that much effort; but the flip side is you can put in years with no reward or the pie gets sliced into so many pieces that the big reward is just the hourly you would have made working for someone else. There's big individual cases and class action cases, there's also cases suing for $30k and the lawyer makes $10k off of 2 weeks work (spread out over 6 months possibly.) Lawsuits take time (expect court dates 2+ years after filing, may have 6 months wait to file.)
Civil defense When someone gets sued, they look for someone to defend them; sometimes they pay more than the cost of losing because being found liable would also be problematic. The benefit here can be repeat business (organizations that get sued, may get sued again; if you do a good job they may hire you again.) You can win, or you can negotiate a settlement; in the later case the other side is likely willing to work with you and you can sell it to your client because they hired you for your expertise.
to be continued