Nine years ago, Bryan Brown was entering his third year in a concurrent J.D./LL.M. program at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle and spoke to The National Jurist, talking highly of the LL.M. program in Asian Comparative Law, and its professors. Despite the heavy workload it presented, the former banker graduated in 2002 and prepared for a career in his chosen path.
Today, Brown says the additional degree did pay off for him and led to great job opportunities in international law after graduation. He is now corporate counsel for international trade with Caterpillar Inc. at the firm’s world headquarters in Peoria, Ill.
After surviving law school, some intrepid souls commit themselves to a year or more of additional studies in pursuit of a post-graduate degree. Reasons are varied, including enhancement of job prospects, pursuit of more specialized training or a desire to teach. What many want to know is, “Was it worth it?”
As the demands on legal practices change with the times, many law students and graduates are finding that obtaining an LL.M. degree is the most effective way to gain the additional knowledge and experience they need.
The path to the dual degree for Brown wasn’t easy. He also had some part-time jobs while in the program.
“I was working all the time,” he said. “But getting the LL.M. was well worth it.”
Opening doors
Brown spent years building his fluency in Japanese. As an undergraduate at the University of California at San Diego, Brown had studied economics while minoring in Japanese. But he went far beyond that classroom instruction by working more than three years in Japan after getting his bachelor’s degree. While there, he taught English conversation to Japanese students in the evenings and studied Japanese by day.
The Asian Law Center at the University of Washington was one of the first of its kind in the United States when it was launched in 1967. The center sets high requirements for applicants and expects those students coming from Europe or English-speaking countries to be proficient in an Asian language so that they can do original research in that language on legal topics. In his research, Brown did a comparative study of U.S. and Japanese insider trading laws and regulations.
The year that he was at the Asian Law Center, he was the only American working on an LL.M., although many other Americans have gone through the program. His fellow students then were primarily Japanese, but there were Chinese and Koreans as well.“The LL.M. did open doors for me, and I’ve found that other Americans who have been in the program have had very rewarding careers,” he said.
After graduating from law school, Brown worked first as a clerk for two years in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York City. Before joining Caterpillar, he spent three years in Washington, D.C., with Baker Hostetler, one of the nation’s largest law firms, where he worked on legal issues involving disputes between the United States and Canada over trade in softwood lumber.
Mie Murazumi, the graduate program administrator for the Asian Law Center, said that some American applicants already have a J.D. when they enter the program, or they can complete their LL.M. simultaneously while getting a J.D. at the university, just as Brown did.
“Those doing the two degrees at the same time are able to use 12 of their quarter credits toward both programs,” she said. “Some of them do have to do extra work for one summer or perhaps stay for an extra quarter. They have to plan their second and third years of law school very, very carefully. But amazingly, some students can take on a lot of extra work and do it all at once.”
This year, more than 35 students are part of the Asian Law Center LL.M. program. The center also has a Ph.D. program. Although there are language requirements for Americans like Brown who take degrees at the center, foreign students face tough requirements as well. They must be attorneys in their home countries and must be fluent in English.
Another year of law school? Why not.
Trevor Burggraff relished in the LL.M. program at Southern Illinois University School of Law in Carbondale when National Jurist editors talked to him last October. He graduated this past spring with a degree in Health Law and Policy, one year after finishing his J.D. degree at the same law school. He is now an attorney at Jorden Bischoff & Hiser in Scottsdale, Ariz., concentrating on environmental law, land use and zoning, government relations and lobbying, real estate, business law and Indian law.
In part, Burggraff said, he had decided to seek the extra degree because he hadn’t yet found a job that he wanted to take, but he was also interested in the health field. The program had academic requirements, of course, including the need to produce a major research paper, but it also provided an externship opportunity that helped give him skills and experience he is now using while practicing law with a firm in Scottsdale.
While in the LL.M. program, he also found time to take bar exams in Illinois and Arizona and became licensed to practice in both states.
“It was absolutely worthwhile,” he said about his LL.M. experience. “I’ve talked to many 3Ls about it. If they have doubts about entering the current job market, they really should think about taking another year at law school.”
His externship involved working as a student case manager in Southern Illinois’ Veterans’ Legal Assistance Program, that provides pro bono legal services to Illinois veterans appealing disability claims with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The legal aid program, funded by the state, is aimed at helping veterans or their relatives deal with claims that often went back for years. Another goal is to help students bridge the gap between the theoretical study of the law and its practical application, particularly in dealing with government agencies.
As an LL.M. candidate, Burggraff was also accredited by the Veterans Administration to handle cases on his own. He served as assistant to the director of the veterans program at SIU and helped draft legislation that established veteran and service member treatment courts in Illinois. He also worked in seeking federal grants for the program.
Southern Illinois had formally established its Center for Health Law and Policy in 2004, but had already spent more than 20 years involved in teaching, research and service activities addressing health care regulation, patient safety and medical liability, bioethics, public health, mental health and food and drug law.
His firm is not explicitly involved in the health area, Burggraff said, “but there is a strong association between the environmental and clean air compliance type work I am now doing and the health policy regulations I was involved with before. My LL.M. was in a different subject area, but the two fields fit together very well. They parallel each other. Environmental law and health law go hand in hand.”
He also believes he may be able to expand into health-related cases into his current job.
He was hired by the Arizona law firm in part because he had had an internship there previously, he said. But his advanced degree also played a role.
“I had previous ties to the job here, of course, but I believe my LL.M. helped seal the deal,” Burggraff said.
