Academic Requirements for the LLM Degree

To earn the LLM degree, each student must successfully complete a course of at least 24 hours of academic credit, as approved by his or her faculty adviser. These 24 credit hours are to be earned from the law school's general course offerings, which include a strong focus on international and comparative law courses but also include business law courses from the College's Innovation, Business and Law program as well as cutting-edge courses in all other major fields of public and private law.

For foreign-educated lawyers, 3 of the 24 credits must be earned as follows:

• one pass/fail credit for a course on U.S. methods of legal reasoning (takes place during August orientation, may be waived for common-law trained students);
• one pass/fail credit for a tutorial course designed to give foreign-trained jurists a comparative overview of the U.S. legal system and legal institutions; and
• at least one graded credit for a research paper on some aspect of comparative law, public international law, or international trade law.

U.S. JD-holders and foreigners who have been trained in another common-law jurisdiction and whose English competence is sufficiently high are required to undertake a more ambitious, 4-credit hour research project intended to lead to the production of a publishable paper in the field of international and comparative law. Others suitably qualified may also attempt the longer research paper with their advisor's approval. To assist the students with their research and writing, they are organized into a writing seminar that runs throughout the fall and spring semesters.

With the exception of the special tutorial and the writing seminar, courses are taken together with regular JD students from the law school's rich offerings on U.S., international, and comparative law. This method of instruction ensures a very effective comparative experience for the foreigners through broad contact with U.S. law students and professors, and the U.S.-trained students similarly benefit from close contact with the foreign-trained lawyers.