Is Getting An LLM Worth It After Law School?

Is Getting An LLM Worth It After Law School?

While in law school you may hear the term “LLM” being thrown around. An LLM is short for Legum Magister, which is Latin for “Master of Laws.” An LLM is usually obtained by completing a one-year full-time program after completion of the traditional three-year law school curriculum. Many times, those students who pursue LLMs are interested in gaining experience in specialized fields of law, like tax law. LLMs are often the center of debate in the legal world. Do law firms really care whether a candidate has an LLM? If so, does that justify the cost of obtaining an LLM? Is getting an LLM worth it?

Is Getting An LLM Worth It After Law School?

Who Typically Gets An LLM

In the United States, LLMs are generally sought after by two groups. The first group are those individuals that are looking to practice a specialized type of law. Some common LLM specialties include tax law and international law.

The second group of individuals that generally look to obtaining an LLM is foreign attorneys. Many foreign attorneys that want to practice in the United States or learn about American laws enroll in LLM programs. Outside of America, a law degree is usually a bachelor’s degree (often called an LL.B.) obtained during undergraduate studies. While that may be good enough to practice law in other countries, that’s not the case in the United States. Completing an LL.M. can allow foreign lawyers to sit for the Bar Exam without completing a three-year JD program.

Does An LLM Really Help?

Like we mentioned above, there really isn’t a huge amount of data to indicate that LLMs are beneficial to lawyers. Sure, some employers would like to see them on a resume. However, a lot of employers, the vast majority in fact, simply don’t give the degrees much weight. The reason has to do with the practice of law vs. the study of law. In short, an LLM doesn’t offer much of anything that you can’t just pick up from day-to-day legal practice.

Can an LLM hurt your resume? No. That’s not the point though. The question has to do with how much tuition law schools charge for LLM programs. Hint: It’s not cheap.

The Cost of LLM Programs

Law schools have no problem selling students a degree with little statistics surrounding employment or earning capacity. Law schools do very little to report on LLM employment statistics. The ABA doesn’t even track employment or salary data for LLM graduates. However, for many law schools, LLM degrees are a major cash cow.

For a majority of students currently enrolled in law school, an LLM is a fourth year of study. That fourth year of study is on top of three years of law school tuition, expenses, cost of living, etc.….In other words – Debt. Almost all law school students graduate with some form of debt and enrolling in an LLM program does not help. On average, you can expect the cost of an LLM from a top law school to cost roughly $100,000.00.

For example, Harvard Law School estimates that with books, tuition, expense, etc.…students can expect to spend at least $100,000.00. The University of Pennsylvania School of Law estimates that the LLM student budget for 2020-2021 is $98,920.00. Maybe now you can begin to see why LLMs are somewhat of a debated topic in the legal community. Students are essentially giving up one year of earning power to take on additional debt.

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