LLMs: how hard to get into top programs?

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>I have a JD, but recall that there were plenty of LLM candidates around when I was in law school. They seemed to be either international students or Americans who had gone to lower-ranked law schools for their JD degrees.</p>

<p>How hard is it to get into a top LLM program (e.g., a top-10 US News school's LLM program)? Is it as hard as regular JD admissions?</p>

<p>If not, why not just go to a mediocre law school with a full ride and then get an LLM? I forget whether or not LLM students had the same interviewing procedures that JDs did, but if so, wouldn't one getting an LLM be the most cost-effective ticket to a large law firm?</p>

2

<p>Big firms don’t really hire LLM students outside of Tax, and then only from a few schools and still not very many.</p>

3

<p>When I was in law school, big firms did, although perhaps not as often as regular JDs.</p>

<p>How hard is it to get LLMs from prestigious schools?</p>

4

<p>The tax LLM programs are pretty tough to get into, though I don’t have any statistics showing acceptance rates. No idea for the rest, but people generally shouldn’t go for them anyways.</p>

5

<p>Any reason as to why major law firms don’t like hiring LLM students as much as they would JD students?</p>

6

<p>LLM students are invariably the students that didn’t get jobs at OCI. If they had, they’d be working instead of getting their LLMs.The same things that kept them from jobs then keep them from jobs now. The firm hiring structure just isn’t very compatible with post-JD degrees.</p>

<p>The only non-tax LLMs I know working at firms are students who were deferred for a year during the height of the crash and who had nothing else to do. Foreign students converting may stand a better chance, though I have no numbers on this, since they never had a 2L OCI to fail. They have the citizenship problem though, which more than balances it out.</p>