I am so glad you reached out! I was a BME/ME at Duke who ended up becoming a law professor, so I can certainly understand your thinking about law school after Duke.

Of course if you ever have questions about law school in particular, especially from the perspective of an undergraduate engineering student, I am happy to chat more about that. You can reach me via email at email@institution.edu.

As for your question about your first undergraduate summer, I was a greenskeeper my first summer, so from my perspective there is no huge rush to find something career-related. I spent my remaining summers working for a chemical company. That gave me great insight into my feelings about becoming a bench scientist (it was not for me), but it still took me several years to fully take the hint. The point of all this is to frame the question as an experiment (I counsel my law students to think about their career planning this way also). Make a decision during the first part of your spring semester about what you think you want to do when you graduate (note: you do NOT have to correct about this or even particularly confident – anything greater than 50% certainty will do – you are just trying to collect data about what you like ). Then find some way to learn more about what you think you want to be (take classes, volunteer, or (ideally) get a job in a relevant field).

Don’t worry if it is not super prestigious – the point is to get as close to your predicted career as soon as possible and then pay close attention to what you do and do not like about that chosen profession. Collect data on which tasks you think are appealing (and not), and then use that information to adjust your initial choice. If you are right the first time, great. If not, apply what you learned to make a better one next time.

Hope this helps. if you want to talk more let me know.