LL.M. Degree Overview

The philosophy of the LL.M. program is to offer our students a broad platform to design their own course of study within parameters set by the Harvard Law School faculty. Those parameters include some exposure to U.S. law, some writing experience, and, in the case of students who hold a J.D. degree from a school in the U.S. or Puerto Rico, some exposure to legal theory. See Degree Requirements. Within this framework, LL.M. students have enormous latitude in planning their year. Interested faculty, the Graduate Program staff, and special student advisors work hard throughout the year to help students identify and refine their study objectives, then develop an appropriate sequence of courses and other work.

Most of a student's program will be drawn from the regular  Harvard Law School curriculum - some 250 courses and seminars each year, offered to J.D. and graduate students alike. Students also have the opportunity to pursue a limited number of credits at other faculties within Harvard and other area schools and a variety of writing projects. About half of the LL.M. class each year write a 75- to 100-page paper (called the "LL.M. paper") on a topic the student develops in consultation with his or her faculty supervisor. We also offer the more extensive LL.M. thesis, an option designed for students who already have significant research and writing experience and plan careers in law teaching. Other students write shorter papers, whether independently or in conjunction with a course or seminar.

Given the flexibility of the program, the range of curricula students design is enormous. Some students take a varied curriculum, with courses ranging from environmental law to corporations to public international law. Others select courses primarily in a single area, such as constitutional law, business organization and finance, legal theory, or human rights.

Finally, our students have the opportunity to participate in a variety of extracurricular and co-curricular offerings on a not-for-credit basis. Graduate students participate in the full range of student organizations at the Law School. Other opportunities are designed specifically for graduate students. For example, in a typical year we offer between two and four Byse Workshops, taught by specially selected S.J.D. students and treating such disparate subjects as game theory and the law, police misconduct, feminist approaches to law and development, and the history of private international law. Other offerings include the Law Teaching Colloquium, a full-year offering that explores different approaches to the teaching of law, and the Legal Practice Workshop, designed to acquaint students with modes of legal analysis and writing used in the American law firm environment.