As I discussed in my previous post, I think everyone who applies to top LL.M. programs should think about the Harvard Law School essay questions even if they don't intend to apply to Harvard. Harvard has the most difficult set of essay questions that any LL.M. program asks and most who apply to Harvard will be utilizing their content for other schools. So even if you don't apply to Harvard, you should be aware of what some of your strongest competition will be doing. Harvard has four essay questions (you can download the application here).
The Personal Statement questions:
Personal Statement: Please read parts (a) and (b) below carefully and write an essay addressing both questions, with part (a)constituting at least half of the total length. Your entire statement should be no more than 1500 words—anything exceeding the word limit will be disallowed. Please type or word-process your statement, with your full name on the top of each page and your signature at the end, and attach it to your application.
(a)Briefly describe either an important issue in your field of interest or a current legal problem facing a particular country, region, or the world, and then propose a theoretical framework or a legal analysis or strategy to address this issue.
(b)Please tell us something about yourself—in particular, why you wish to pursue an LL.M. degree at Harvard and how doing so connects with what you have done in the past and what you plan to do in the future. Important: Your personal statement must address the above questions specifically, and must be solely the product of your own efforts. We reserve the right to disqualify a statement written by, or with the help of, someone other than the applicant.
Now while (a) and (b) are the main questions, there are actually two other essay questions:
Academic interests: Please describe the areas of your academic interest, including a list of three to five courses in which you are most interested. If you are interested in pursuing the concentration in international finance, tax, human rights, or corporate law and governance, or in the six-credit LL.M. Thesis option, please so indicate. (Note: Please limit your response to no more than 200 words.)
Career plans: What are your career plans (both short-term and long-term) after you complete your graduate law studies? (Check � no more than 3) Law teaching: Full-time Part-time Government service Law Firm In-house (Corporate counsel) International Organization Non-Governmental Organization Judiciary Prosecutor Research Business (non-law) Other (please specify): Please elaborate on your plans. In which country (or countries) do you intend to pursue your career? (Note: Please limit your response to no more than 200 words.)
Clearly no applicant should duplicate the content they write in essay (b) and in these two shorter questions, yet I believe many applicants do because they treat these two shorter questions as simply application questions and not essay questions. If you think of them as essay questions, you see that, in fact, Harvard gives 1900 words maximum to each applicant. This is more than you are likely to write for any school with the possible exception of schools that don't specify essay length.
Now let's analyze the questions:
(a)Briefly describe either an important issue in your field of interest or a current legal problem facing a particular country, region, or the world, and then propose a theoretical framework or a legal analysis or strategy to address this issue.
Question (a) is what makes Harvard's essay really different from most other LL.M. applications. This is a real test of your analytical and legal thinking. It is also test of your ability to communicate something important in 750-1000 words. You need at least 500 for (b) and (a) must be at least 750 words long. From my experience the most effective way to write this essay is to:
1. Identify a legal issue that you know really well and can provide a nuanced perspective on. Ideally it should also relate to what you intend to study at Harvard, but at minimum should be a reflection of your best legal thinking.
2. Write a long first draft, say 1000-2000 words.
3. Expect to go through at least four more drafts before it is close to being finished.
4. Show it to a lawyer or other legal expert who can assess whether what you say is actually accurate and impressive. With my clients, I always tell them to do this. Even if I am very familiar with the legal issue my client is analyzing, I ask them to try to get expert advice. If expert advice is not available, find the next best thing, a fellow legal practitioner whose opinion you trust.
5. If you use an admissions consultant, you should ask him or her to assess this essay within the context of your entire application and in comparison to other applicants who were admitted to Harvard.
(b)Please tell us something about yourself—in particular, why you wish to pursue an LL.M. degree at Harvard and how doing so connects with what you have done in the past and what you plan to do in the future.
This is actually a very standard question though somewhat different from the standard catchall questions that most other schools ask. The real issue here is think first what you don't need to include here and that requires looking at the next two essays first, so we will come back to this question.
Academic interests: Please describe the areas of your academic interest, including a list of three to five courses in which you are most interested. If you are interested in pursuing the concentration in international finance, tax, human rights, or corporate law and governance, or in the six-credit LL.M. Thesis option, please so indicate. (Note: Please limit your response to no more than 200 words.)
For most other schools, this would be a standard part of the main question, but Harvard does it a little differently. This means that in (b) you don't have discuss your academic interests in detail because you will doing it here. In the context of your answer, provide the list they ask for. I suggest only focusing on two or three areas of legal interest because if you try to do more you will not be able to say anything very intelligent about it. Instead come across as someone with a very focused academic plan. Your academic plan at Harvard should be consistent with your future career plans.
Please elaborate on your plans. In which country (or countries) do you intend to pursue your career? (Note: Please limit your response to no more than 200 words.)
You should use this space to provide a specific career plan. You will have already talked about your future in (b), but at a more conceptual level. Here you should provide details of your future plans.
One thing to keep in mind: HARVARD IS FOR LEADERS. It does not matter if your leadership is as a judge, a prosecutor, a leading attorney in your field, a government expert, a scholar, or a in-house legal counsel, Harvard is looking for people who will make a difference. Your career plan is the place to show how you will use the legal knowledge you acquire at Harvard to become a credit to the legal profession. In (b) you will focus on "why?"
Now back to (b):
(b)Please tell us something about yourself—in particular, why you wish to pursue an LL.M. degree at Harvard and how doing so connects with what you have done in the past and what you plan to do in the future.
Given that you don't need to provide the details of either your academic plan at Harvard or your career plans, there is plenty of room in (b) to focus on what Harvard wants to know:
1.Why do you want an LL.M. at Harvard? Explain clearly the reason(s) for obtaining an LL.M. and at Harvard in particular.
2. Connect to the past: You need to reveal something about yourself, in particular your motivations for pursuing a legal career and need to trace that motivation to your desire to pursue an LL.M. Tell a story that reveals something about you. If you are having difficulty understanding how to do that, I suggest taking a look at one of my earlier posts.
3. Connect to the future: You need to explain why an LL.M. will help you achieve your future goals. The details for that plan will be discussed in your career plan essay. If you are having difficulty formulating goals, please click here.
A good (b) answer should effectively provide the conceptual backbone that connects all four essays because essay (b) is about your past and future motivations as a legal professional. Those motivations should certainly impact what legal issue you write about in (a) as well as your academic plan at Harvard and your future career plans.
Questions? Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
ハーバード,米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, エッサイ, LLM留学
September 22, 2007
Why All LL.M. Applicants Need to Understand Harvard's Questions
After almost six years of counseling clients on US LL.M. admissions I have reached the conclusion that anyone applying to top LL.M. programs needs to understand the Harvard essays even if they are not applying there. When it comes to LL.M., I think Harvard Law School does. My reasoning is as follows:
1. Harvard Law School is the top general LL.M. program. Yale and Stanford are harder to get into, but they are small specialized programs. Harvard has the best name brand reputation of any American university in the world and so does its law school.
2. Not a single one of the LL.M. admits to Harvard I worked with or know about ever rejected it to attend Columbia, Chicago, or other top general LL.M. programs.
3. For applicants who apply to Harvard, it is the hardest application they will likely have to complete. The only other exception might be UC Berkeley because of the need to have a very detailed plan of study, but that is arguable and highly variable.
4. Most importantly, those who apply to Harvard are also applying to the other top programs and many will most likely be utilizing their Harvard content to prepare essays for other schools. The rigorous analytical and legal thinking that makes for great Harvard essays will thus impact not only their chances for admissions at other schools, but all other applicants' chances as well.
Therefore even if you don't apply to Harvard's LL.M. you need to apply the same level of intellectual rigor to your essays that a successful Harvard admit would be applying to his or her essays. Since you are competing with those who apply to Harvard, you need to write essays at the same level as required by Harvard. In my next post, I analyze Harvard Law School's four essay questions for Fall 2008.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, エッサイ, LLM留学
1. Harvard Law School is the top general LL.M. program. Yale and Stanford are harder to get into, but they are small specialized programs. Harvard has the best name brand reputation of any American university in the world and so does its law school.
2. Not a single one of the LL.M. admits to Harvard I worked with or know about ever rejected it to attend Columbia, Chicago, or other top general LL.M. programs.
3. For applicants who apply to Harvard, it is the hardest application they will likely have to complete. The only other exception might be UC Berkeley because of the need to have a very detailed plan of study, but that is arguable and highly variable.
4. Most importantly, those who apply to Harvard are also applying to the other top programs and many will most likely be utilizing their Harvard content to prepare essays for other schools. The rigorous analytical and legal thinking that makes for great Harvard essays will thus impact not only their chances for admissions at other schools, but all other applicants' chances as well.
Therefore even if you don't apply to Harvard's LL.M. you need to apply the same level of intellectual rigor to your essays that a successful Harvard admit would be applying to his or her essays. Since you are competing with those who apply to Harvard, you need to write essays at the same level as required by Harvard. In my next post, I analyze Harvard Law School's four essay questions for Fall 2008.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, エッサイ, LLM留学
September 21, 2007
Free GRE Preparation
While looking at the University of California Office of President's website, I came across http://www.number2.com/, a site that offers free GRE preparation. I am not sure how good their preparation system is, but if the University of California is willing to link to it, I would certainly think it would be worth trying. "The company was founded by professors and graduate students who wanted to make high quality test preparation universally accessible." Sounds good to me. If you use it, please let me know what you think.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
大学院留学
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
大学院留学
September 20, 2007
How hard is it to get into top US LL.M. programs?
In the following post, I provide a detailed analysis of LL.M. acceptance rates. UPDATES TO THIS POST CAN BE FOUND HERE, BUT READ THIS FIRST. 10/6/07: I have now updated my table on LL.M. admissions rates. Please read this post for my overall analysis, but refer to my most recent for admissions rates.
As I indicated in an earlier post, US Law Schools provide very comprehensive admissions results for their J.D. programs, but significantly less information for LL.M. programs. While ABA approved J.D. programs are required to report detailed admissions information, LL.M. programs are not required to report such data. Using US News and World Report's Law School information, I put together the chart below to look at how difficult it is to get into the J.D. and LL.M. programs at America's Top 20 Law Schools. CLICK ON THE CHART TO ENLARGE IT.
Email me at adammarkus.gmail.com for an excel or pdf version. See below for hyperlinks to where I obtained my data.
While there are many other great US Law Schools, I have, for the most part, focused on the schools that the LLM applicants I have worked with in Japan are most likely to apply to. The great exception is Yale, which is included because of its rank. Given that Yale's program is specifically designed for those who are seeking academic careers, my clients, lawyers (弁護士 Bengoshi), patent lawyers (弁理士 Benrishi), judges, prosecutors, and company and government sponsored legal experts don't typically don't fit the admissions criteria.
SO HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO GET ADMITTED?
Well for some schools like University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, the program in Banking and Financial Law at Boston University, and USC it is not even possible to determine from their websites how many students attend each year. While I could contact students in these programs to get more numbers, I was specifically interested in seeing to what extent these schools actually provide good admissions data easily accessible to applicants. I have to say, as you can see from reviewing my table or actually looking at the websites I reference at the end of this post, that the amount of data available is quite limited.
ESTIMATED ACCEPTANCE RATES:
I am have created estimated LL.M. acceptance rates mostly based on J.D. Yield. I do this based on the following assumptions:
1. J.D. Yield is an excellent indicator of a school's overall popularity with applicants. All things being equal someone admitted to a school with a higher yield is simply more likely to go there than someone admitted to a school with a lower yield. This is not always the case, but it generally the case.
2. LLM applicants, in-part, make decisions based on overall school ranking and ranking and yield are generally well connected (though not conclusively so).
3. I think JD yield rates accurately reflect the way my own LL.M. clients have acted in the past.
4. For NYU, which had more than 2000 applications and 425 students at the New York City campus and 40 in Singapore for Fall 2007, this formula does not work because the number of estimated admits that the formula generates is absurdly high. I have assumed their yield was 50%, which produces an acceptance rate of 47%. Their J.D. yield rate is very low and their LL.M. class is very big, so I think this is a reasonable adjustment. Of course, I wish I had real the numbers!
My formula for LLM Estimated Number Accepted:
(Number of LL.M. Enrolled/(JD Yield)=(Estimated LL.M. Number Accepted)
My formula for LL.M. Estimated Acceptance Rate:
(Estimated Number Accepted)/(Number Applied)= (Estimated LL.M. Acceptance Rate)
My estimated LL.M. acceptance rates are simply a guess and I would not be surprised if they are wrong. Use them at your own risk. Hopefully, I will be able to get better real numbers from schools, but I think my estimates are better than nothing.
Assuming my estimates are correct (a big assumption), the admission rates for top LL.M. programs are typically somewhere between 26% and 45%.
THE TOP THREE
While not recorded on my table because it is completely outside my methodology, I assume the acceptance rates at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford are fairly close to the rates of J.D. admission. Given Harvard's size and the fact that the only schools a Harvard admit is likely to choose over Harvard are Yale and Stanford, I assume Harvard's LL.M. acceptance rate can't be higher than 15% and maybe as low as 10%.
Is Better LL.M. Admissions Data Available?
In effort to answer that question, I have emailed all 20 of the schools that I researched. I sent them all the same identical email at the same time. While I have specific contacts at some of these programs, I also wanted to see how the programs would react to such a request using their standard email addresses. I will report my results as I receive them. Questions? Comments? Write comments here or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/LLM.htm
Harvard
http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/graduate/admissions/downloadapplication.php
(download application, it mentions 150 spots, but no other information)
Stanford
http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/degrees/advanced/
New York University
http://www.nyulawglobal.org/graduateadmissions/eligibilitystandards.htm
Columbia
http://www.law.columbia.edu/llm_jsd
University of Chicago
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/prospective/llm-faq.html
University of Pennsylvania
I found nothing on their site, http://www.law.upenn.edu/prospective/grad/coursestudy.html#llm
University of California, Berkeley
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/admissions/advdegree/catalog/page6.html
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
http://www.law.umich.edu/prospectivestudents/graduate/degreeprograms.htm
Assume 55 per year.
Duke
http://www.law.duke.edu/internat/internationalStudents.html
University of Virginia
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/prospectives/grad/faq.htm
"Virginia Law receives several hundred applications each year for a class of fewer than 50 students." The brochure states 45 per year.
Northwestern
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/admissions/profile/
provided no information. It used to.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/career/statistics/llm.html
99 in the class of 2006 for both the LL.M. and LL.M./Kellogg programs.
Cornell
http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/admissions/degrees/lmm_jsd.cfm
I assumed 900 applied and 60 matriculated.
Georgetown
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/graduate/foreign.cfm
"Each year Georgetown Law Center provides Master of Laws degree programs for more than 100 students who received their legal training outside the United States." I used 100.
UCLA
Nothing found at http://www.law.ucla.edu/home/index.asp?page=2266
or elsewhere.
USC
Nothing found at http://lawgip.usc.edu/llm/admissions.cfm or elsewhere.
Vanderbilt
http://law.vanderbilt.edu/prospective-students/llm-program-/llm-class-of-2008-profile/index.aspx
I counted the LLM students in the photo: 25.
University of Texas-Austin
http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/degrees/llm/
"The LL.M. program is a small and extremely selective program. Each year we receive approximately 250 applications for the 30 or so places in the LL.M. class. In 2006–2007, our LL.M. class included 28 students from 14 countries." I assumed 30 attend and 250 applications.
Washington University St. Louis
No data provided at http://law.wustl.edu/ataglance/
or elsewhere.
Boston University
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/llm/american/faqs.html#faqs-large
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/llm/intellectual/faqs.html#howlarge
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
http://www.law.umn.edu/llm/apply.html#17
"We receive about 200 applications per year on average." "We enroll a class of 25 to 30 students each year." I assume 200 applications and 30 students.
=============================================
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, LLM留学
As I indicated in an earlier post, US Law Schools provide very comprehensive admissions results for their J.D. programs, but significantly less information for LL.M. programs. While ABA approved J.D. programs are required to report detailed admissions information, LL.M. programs are not required to report such data. Using US News and World Report's Law School information, I put together the chart below to look at how difficult it is to get into the J.D. and LL.M. programs at America's Top 20 Law Schools. CLICK ON THE CHART TO ENLARGE IT.
Email me at adammarkus.gmail.com for an excel or pdf version. See below for hyperlinks to where I obtained my data.While there are many other great US Law Schools, I have, for the most part, focused on the schools that the LLM applicants I have worked with in Japan are most likely to apply to. The great exception is Yale, which is included because of its rank. Given that Yale's program is specifically designed for those who are seeking academic careers, my clients, lawyers (弁護士 Bengoshi), patent lawyers (弁理士 Benrishi), judges, prosecutors, and company and government sponsored legal experts don't typically don't fit the admissions criteria.
SO HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO GET ADMITTED?
Well for some schools like University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, the program in Banking and Financial Law at Boston University, and USC it is not even possible to determine from their websites how many students attend each year. While I could contact students in these programs to get more numbers, I was specifically interested in seeing to what extent these schools actually provide good admissions data easily accessible to applicants. I have to say, as you can see from reviewing my table or actually looking at the websites I reference at the end of this post, that the amount of data available is quite limited.
ESTIMATED ACCEPTANCE RATES:
I am have created estimated LL.M. acceptance rates mostly based on J.D. Yield. I do this based on the following assumptions:
1. J.D. Yield is an excellent indicator of a school's overall popularity with applicants. All things being equal someone admitted to a school with a higher yield is simply more likely to go there than someone admitted to a school with a lower yield. This is not always the case, but it generally the case.
2. LLM applicants, in-part, make decisions based on overall school ranking and ranking and yield are generally well connected (though not conclusively so).
3. I think JD yield rates accurately reflect the way my own LL.M. clients have acted in the past.
4. For NYU, which had more than 2000 applications and 425 students at the New York City campus and 40 in Singapore for Fall 2007, this formula does not work because the number of estimated admits that the formula generates is absurdly high. I have assumed their yield was 50%, which produces an acceptance rate of 47%. Their J.D. yield rate is very low and their LL.M. class is very big, so I think this is a reasonable adjustment. Of course, I wish I had real the numbers!
My formula for LLM Estimated Number Accepted:
(Number of LL.M. Enrolled/(JD Yield)=(Estimated LL.M. Number Accepted)
My formula for LL.M. Estimated Acceptance Rate:
(Estimated Number Accepted)/(Number Applied)= (Estimated LL.M. Acceptance Rate)
My estimated LL.M. acceptance rates are simply a guess and I would not be surprised if they are wrong. Use them at your own risk. Hopefully, I will be able to get better real numbers from schools, but I think my estimates are better than nothing.
Assuming my estimates are correct (a big assumption), the admission rates for top LL.M. programs are typically somewhere between 26% and 45%.
THE TOP THREE
While not recorded on my table because it is completely outside my methodology, I assume the acceptance rates at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford are fairly close to the rates of J.D. admission. Given Harvard's size and the fact that the only schools a Harvard admit is likely to choose over Harvard are Yale and Stanford, I assume Harvard's LL.M. acceptance rate can't be higher than 15% and maybe as low as 10%.
Is Better LL.M. Admissions Data Available?
In effort to answer that question, I have emailed all 20 of the schools that I researched. I sent them all the same identical email at the same time. While I have specific contacts at some of these programs, I also wanted to see how the programs would react to such a request using their standard email addresses. I will report my results as I receive them. Questions? Comments? Write comments here or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
Specific urls cited for LL.M. data from US News and World Report's Top 20 US Law Schools for 2008 (in rank order)
Yalehttp://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/LLM.htm
Harvard
http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/graduate/admissions/downloadapplication.php
(download application, it mentions 150 spots, but no other information)
Stanford
http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/degrees/advanced/
New York University
http://www.nyulawglobal.org/graduateadmissions/eligibilitystandards.htm
Columbia
http://www.law.columbia.edu/llm_jsd
University of Chicago
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/prospective/llm-faq.html
University of Pennsylvania
I found nothing on their site, http://www.law.upenn.edu/prospective/grad/coursestudy.html#llm
University of California, Berkeley
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/admissions/advdegree/catalog/page6.html
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
http://www.law.umich.edu/prospectivestudents/graduate/degreeprograms.htm
Assume 55 per year.
Duke
http://www.law.duke.edu/internat/internationalStudents.html
University of Virginia
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/prospectives/grad/faq.htm
"Virginia Law receives several hundred applications each year for a class of fewer than 50 students." The brochure states 45 per year.
Northwestern
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/admissions/profile/
provided no information. It used to.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/career/statistics/llm.html
99 in the class of 2006 for both the LL.M. and LL.M./Kellogg programs.
Cornell
http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/admissions/degrees/lmm_jsd.cfm
I assumed 900 applied and 60 matriculated.
Georgetown
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/graduate/foreign.cfm
"Each year Georgetown Law Center provides Master of Laws degree programs for more than 100 students who received their legal training outside the United States." I used 100.
UCLA
Nothing found at http://www.law.ucla.edu/home/index.asp?page=2266
or elsewhere.
USC
Nothing found at http://lawgip.usc.edu/llm/admissions.cfm or elsewhere.
Vanderbilt
http://law.vanderbilt.edu/prospective-students/llm-program-/llm-class-of-2008-profile/index.aspx
I counted the LLM students in the photo: 25.
University of Texas-Austin
http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/degrees/llm/
"The LL.M. program is a small and extremely selective program. Each year we receive approximately 250 applications for the 30 or so places in the LL.M. class. In 2006–2007, our LL.M. class included 28 students from 14 countries." I assumed 30 attend and 250 applications.
Washington University St. Louis
No data provided at http://law.wustl.edu/ataglance/
or elsewhere.
Boston University
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/llm/american/faqs.html#faqs-large
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/llm/intellectual/faqs.html#howlarge
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
http://www.law.umn.edu/llm/apply.html#17
"We receive about 200 applications per year on average." "We enroll a class of 25 to 30 students each year." I assume 200 applications and 30 students.
=============================================
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
コロンビア, ハーバード, シカゴ, スタンフォード, 米国ロースクール、米国大学法学院, 大学院入学, カウンセリング, コンサルティング, 合格対策, 合格率, LLM留学
US Law School Admissions Data Reporting Requirements
In the first post in this series, I considered the impact on LL.M applicants caused by the discrepancy between the way LL.M. and J.D. admissions data is reported. In the third post in this series, I will provide analysis of the relative difficulty of getting into top J.D. and LL.M. programs.
Here, I consider the role of the primary credentialing authority for American Law Schools, the American Bar Association (ABA). As I will explain, ABA Approved Law Schools are, in fact, subject to reporting admissions data for J.D. programs (Download Chapter Five and read Standard 509, Interpretation 509-1, Section (1) ), but have no obligation to report LL.M. admissions data.
One reason for the discrepancy between the way US Law Schools report admissions data for LL.M. and J.D. can be traced to the ABA approval process:
The ABA does not formally approve any program other than the first degree in law (J.D.). For those not familiar with the way the bar works, this lack of oversight of LL.M. might seem odd because one could mistakenly believe that the ABA actually regulates bar admission. So how do LL.M.s get admitted to the bar?
The criteria for eligibility to take the bar examination or to otherwise qualify for bar admission are set by each state, not by the ABA or the Council for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
Thus states determine who can take the bar, not the ABA. The ABA is thus able to avoid the whole issue of LL.M. programs and bar passage.
Interestingly enough, even though the ABA does not provide direct oversight on LL.M. degrees, the two states, California and New York, that routinely accept the US LL.M. degree for bar admission, only accept LL.M.s from ABA approved schools.
In California, the LL.M. is accepted if it is from an ABA approved school, but California also accepts J.D. graduates of non-ABA approved schools. Hence California which actually oversees non-ABA approved law school's J.D. programs appears to assume that the ABA is providing oversight for the LL.M., which the ABA is not doing.
In New York, the standards for LL.M. or other graduate degree study are explained in great depth. Again the assumption appears to be that New York assumes ABA oversight:
Approved Law School - Approved law school means a U.S. law school approved by the American Bar Association (ABA). Please note that the Board cannot recommend a particular law schools nor does the Board maintain a list of schools that offer programs that will satisfy the Rule 520.6. You may contact the ABA's Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar at their website (http://www.abanet.org/legaled) to obtain a list of ABA approved law schools.
I conclude from the above that neither state bars or the ABA are particularly concerned about LL.M. programs and certainly not something as particular as the reporting of admissions data.
The other principal body that one could look to would be the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), but my review of the requirements for member institutions leads me to the conclusion that the aforementioned ABA requirement for the reporting of J.D. admissions numbers is one that ABA Approved Schools are required to follow. However the AALS Bylaws does include language that I find very interesting:
Bylaw Section 6-2. Admissions c. A member school shall deal fairly with applicants for admission.
There are many ways to interpret such a fairness standard. At least at this time, it does not include proving LL.M. applicants with the same quality of data as J.D. applicants. I think this should change because LL.M. applicants should be able to make admissions decisions based on the same kind of admissions data that J.D. applicants have access to. In the next post in this series, I will explain what I will be doing about this issue.
Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
-Adam Markus
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Here, I consider the role of the primary credentialing authority for American Law Schools, the American Bar Association (ABA). As I will explain, ABA Approved Law Schools are, in fact, subject to reporting admissions data for J.D. programs (Download Chapter Five and read Standard 509, Interpretation 509-1, Section (1) ), but have no obligation to report LL.M. admissions data.
One reason for the discrepancy between the way US Law Schools report admissions data for LL.M. and J.D. can be traced to the ABA approval process:
The ABA does not formally approve any program other than the first degree in law (J.D.). For those not familiar with the way the bar works, this lack of oversight of LL.M. might seem odd because one could mistakenly believe that the ABA actually regulates bar admission. So how do LL.M.s get admitted to the bar?
The criteria for eligibility to take the bar examination or to otherwise qualify for bar admission are set by each state, not by the ABA or the Council for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
Thus states determine who can take the bar, not the ABA. The ABA is thus able to avoid the whole issue of LL.M. programs and bar passage.
Interestingly enough, even though the ABA does not provide direct oversight on LL.M. degrees, the two states, California and New York, that routinely accept the US LL.M. degree for bar admission, only accept LL.M.s from ABA approved schools.
In California, the LL.M. is accepted if it is from an ABA approved school, but California also accepts J.D. graduates of non-ABA approved schools. Hence California which actually oversees non-ABA approved law school's J.D. programs appears to assume that the ABA is providing oversight for the LL.M., which the ABA is not doing.
In New York, the standards for LL.M. or other graduate degree study are explained in great depth. Again the assumption appears to be that New York assumes ABA oversight:
Approved Law School - Approved law school means a U.S. law school approved by the American Bar Association (ABA). Please note that the Board cannot recommend a particular law schools nor does the Board maintain a list of schools that offer programs that will satisfy the Rule 520.6. You may contact the ABA's Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar at their website (http://www.abanet.org/legaled) to obtain a list of ABA approved law schools.
I conclude from the above that neither state bars or the ABA are particularly concerned about LL.M. programs and certainly not something as particular as the reporting of admissions data.
The other principal body that one could look to would be the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), but my review of the requirements for member institutions leads me to the conclusion that the aforementioned ABA requirement for the reporting of J.D. admissions numbers is one that ABA Approved Schools are required to follow. However the AALS Bylaws does include language that I find very interesting:
Bylaw Section 6-2. Admissions c. A member school shall deal fairly with applicants for admission.
There are many ways to interpret such a fairness standard. At least at this time, it does not include proving LL.M. applicants with the same quality of data as J.D. applicants. I think this should change because LL.M. applicants should be able to make admissions decisions based on the same kind of admissions data that J.D. applicants have access to. In the next post in this series, I will explain what I will be doing about this issue.
Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
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