Getting an advanced degree can make a difference if you want to focus on a hot specialty area such as tax, cybersecurity, health, environmental and intellectual property law.
With apologies to Sir Isaac Newton, we offer the first law of a successful legal career: A lawyer in motion stays in motion. (That’s less chilling than, say: Adapt or die.)
It would be hard to find attorneys who have not upped their game by remaining intellectually curious, either through their daily legal practice, networking, outside engagement or more schooling. Remaining static is not an attractive option, because an object that’s static stays so.
That’s where an LL.M. comes in. It can be a true game changer, particularly for mid-career attorneys. It can jump-start their current professional status or even help propel them into a whole new field. That’s why The National Jurist annually offers a guide to the nation’s LL.M. offerings, which are growing more robust all the time.
Not only are more schools creating new programs, but some are offering them online. So the options are expanding in both variety and accessibility.
Having that added degree can help job candidates stand out, particularly in fluid legal specialties such as tax and compliance.
“It’s like adding tools to the tool belt,” said Robert “Joey” Dormady, director of graduate programs at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.
He noted that over time, practicing lawyers hone certain skills — from litigation to legal writing to client engagement — and an LL.M. allows them to build on that very significant base. Having specialized knowledge can make them more valuable in their current roles or make them more attractive candidates if they’re looking for jobs at more lucrative firms.
An LL.M. also helps if they’re considering new practice areas, Dormady said. Some lawyers graduate from law school not knowing exactly where their passions lie. So they take jobs to establish themselves and — this is important — pay the bills. Mid-career, they may realize they are not working in an area that truly speaks to them. Getting an LL.M. in a practice area they feel passionate about can make a positive transition possible.
Some LL.M. students come from Big Law firms, Dormady said. They have significant experience but want to transition to a different kind of legal career.
Dormady noted that Arizona State University looks to help its law graduates well past graduation. Indeed, it has a program called Law for Life, which offers alumni additional educational opportunities, including discounted tuition for LL.M. degrees and Master of Legal Studies (MLS) programs.
The school consistently looks for innovative ways to help graduates be successful well into their careers.
“We try to stay abreast of trends and help students accordingly,” Dormady said.
A range of offerings
It would be hard not to find an LL.M. program that resonates with your goals, given the range of offerings. Once mostly limited to foreign students seeking the degree to be eligible for the U.S. bar, the LL.M. is now available in a host of specialties.
A growing number of schools offer LL.M. degrees in trending fields such as intellectual property, health and environmental law. Tax continues to be one of the most popular LL.M. degrees, with more than 30 schools offering it.
Some schools focus on the strengths of their existing curricula when they create their LL.M. programs. UCLA School of Law, for instance, offers the nation’s only LL.M. in Critical Race Studies. The school has a long history in that subject area. Four years ago, it celebrated the 20th anniversary of the program and noted that it “remains unparalleled in legal education, is a key area of renown for UCLA Law, and ranks among our most popular centers of scholarship and specializations for students.”
Fordham University School of Law has an LL.M. in Fashion Law. The school is based in New York, the nation’s fashion capital. Fordham officials note that the fashion industry incorporates numerous legal threads: “The diverse categories of law that affect the business of fashion include intellectual property, business and finance, international trade and government regulation and consumer culture and civil rights.”
While choices are plentiful, knowing which LL.M. program could be most beneficial can be vexing.
How to choose an LL.M. program
If you’re going after an LL.M., you need to pursue one that will make a serious difference in your career future. After all, who wants to go back to law school? Who wants to study, take copious notes, prime for exams?
Right. It better be worth it.
Tom Warschefsky wanted to pursue an LL.M., but he wanted to be sure it was the right move. He got his LL.M. in cybersecurity from University of Texas School of Law in Austin because he hopes it will enhance his career.
Warschefsky has been practicing law — his area is national defense — since graduating from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School in Lansing in 2009. However, he wanted to gain knowledge in cybersecurity, a specialty that’s experiencing a huge increase in demand.
“I didn’t know a ton about it,” he said. “It impacts every aspect of our lives.”
It was a mid-career move that made perfect sense, he said. His previous work was more client focused. This would offer a different and broader perspective.
“If I would have done it right out of law school, I wouldn’t have gotten the same kind of benefit,” Warschefsky said. “It would have felt like another year of law school.”
So how did he choose University of Texas?
Not many schools offer an LL.M. in cybersecurity, so that narrowed his search, but Warschefsky still did considerable research. Even though the cost was being paid by his employer, he still wanted to make sure he found the right fit. After all, he was going to be spending nearly a year on campus. He lives in North Carolina, and no law schools in his state offer an LL.M. in the specialty.
It turned out to be a win-win, he said.
One strength of the program is that LL.M. students can participate in all facets of the law school, from clinics to journals to student organizations. Experiential learning and extracurricular opportunities abound.
The students are also given considerable support, including alumni mentors. The school has a LL.M. career services adviser as well.
For U.S. students, the primary reasons for seeking an LL.M. are to boost their careers or to pivot to a new specialty, such as energy, which University of Texas capitalizes on, given that Texas is the nation’s largest energy producer.
