<p>If you go to a law school, do you have to stay in that country or can you go back? I use to think that you had to stay because different countries had different laws. but i was researching some of the most famous Canadian lawyers and many of them went to Harvard for law...how is this possible?</p>
<p>I can think of several scenarios in which a law degree might be useful outside of the country which it was acquired in, most notably when you work for a multinational company, when you get a degree in international law rather than in the laws of that country, or if you are (/aspire to be) an academic doing “comparative law” and therefore study the laws of several countries in depth.</p>
<p>But I think you are right in that one should probably study law in the country one wants to live in afterwards.</p>
<p>In the US, you are advised to study law in the state where you intend to practice so that you are better prepared to pass that state’s Bar Exam. Alternately, students who have earned law degrees in State A, will take a specific Bar prep course for State B in order to pass the exam for State B. People with law degrees from outside the US do need to pass the Bar for the states where they practice unless they are working in some facet of international law, and don’t need a state license. If they want to be licensed to practice law, often they will to a specialized Master of Law program that focuses on the pre-Bar coursework.</p>
<p>If you look carefully at the academic histories of these Canadian lawyers, you also may find that they have a first degree in law from a Canadian university, and that then they did graduate work at Harvard. The graduate work might be a regular Harvard law degree, or it might be a specialized Master or Doctorate of Law.</p>
<p>so what do they do? a law undergrad? or are you saying they get and undergrad, then go to law school in canada, then get a masters at harvard?</p>
<p>what kind of degree do you get from law school? is it not a masters?</p>
<p>Law is an undergraduate/first degree program in many countries. I don’t know if Canada is one of them. Students who complete a first degree in law in another country, and who subsequently study law in the US do so as grad students of law, which is not quite the same as being a typical law school student in the US. People who finish a regular US law degree normally have completed a full 4 year undergraduate degree (some are admitted early, but that is a whole other story). These folks can go on to do a specialization in a given field of law and earn a Masters or Ph.D. of Law.</p>
<p>The title of the degree awarded after a US law school program varies by the university that awards it. Most US universities award a J.D. (Juris Doctor/Doctor of Jurisprudence), I think that some award an LL.M. (Master of Law). The key point, however, is not the name of the degree, but rather that you are prepared for the Bar exam(s) in the states where you want to practice. Until the mid-70s, there were still a number of states where you could “read law” with a practicing lawyer and then sit the Bar without formal study (the way Abraham Lincoln did it). I don’t know if that is possible anywhere these days.</p>
<p>Academic titles (Ph.D., M.S., D. Phil., LL.M., A.B., Phil.Sci., etc.) in all their near-infinite variety make for an interesting study in and of themselves.</p>