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UC Berkeley Launching Summer LL.M. Program
Boalt Hall is among the latest law schools to offer the masters in law
The Recorder
June 13, 2008
Nell Jessup Newton, University of California Hastings College of the Law.
Tapping into demand from international students, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law is launching a new accelerated summer LL.M. program in 2009.
International students who already hold a professional law degree will be able to earn their LL.M. -- or masters in law -- in two summers, taking courses packed into three-month segments. The school says graduates will come out qualified to take the California bar exam.
The move, approved by faculty in late April, reflects a wider interest in U.S.-style legal education from around the world.
Professor Andrew Guzman, starting July 1, will head the law school's graduate programs, including both the summer and the academic-year LL.M.s. He said interest from applicants has swelled.
For academic year 2008-09, Berkeley received 1,000 applications for its academic-year LL.M. program, compared with 611 for 2006-07. The school decided some years ago to ramp up that program, Guzman said, boosting its student numbers from 30 in 2003 to 100 expected in the upcoming fall.
In many other countries, getting a promotion requires degrees from another country, Guzman said, adding that exposure to the English language as well as the U.S. way of thinking about problems is valued.
"There's an enormous line of qualified people with law degrees from outside the U.S. who are eager to get a law degree from the U.S.," Guzman said.
"We'll find out soon, but we believe the demand for the summer exists," he added.
UC-Davis School of Law tapped into that long ago. The school launched its summer LL.M. program with 15 students in 2001. Today, the school accepts anywhere between 35 and 40, said Beth Greenwood, executive director of international law programs. The program runs for three summers in six-week segments and is focused on international commercial law. The school also has an academic-year LL.M. that is much broader in its focus and target audience. She believes few other law schools offer a summer LL.M. degree. "As far as I know, we're the only ones," Greenwood said.
UCLA School of Law, which has a one-year LL.M. program for graduates from foreign law schools that's also attracted more applications, has no plans, currently, to offer a summer program. Director of Graduate Studies Lara Stemple said the school received 820 applications for 2008-09 compared with 172 for 2004-05. The school accepts roughly 50 students each year, she added.
Hastings College of the Law Dean Nell Newton says that an accelerated summer program is not a bad way for budget-strapped public schools to make extra money.
"It's a really interesting idea," said Newton, who notes that business schools, which have long offered executive MBA programs, are ahead of law schools on that front.
Hastings offers LL.M. courses to about 20 students during the academic year. Newton said the law school is thinking about ways to use its buildings and facilities in the evening hours and the summers. "We don't have summer school, so all summer our facilities are just sitting there," she said.
Joel Paul, director of the LL.M. and international law programs at Hastings, added that some schools across the country have used LL.M. programs to boost their revenues as well as their U.S. News & World Report rankings.
"Facing economic and ranking pressure, a number of schools have decided to cut the size of entering classes to raise their admissions stats," such as their LSAT and GPA ranges, Paul said. To augment the lost tuition dollars, he said, schools admit more LL.M. students, who don't have LSAT scores. Paul said that is not the case at Hastings, where the LL.M. program is being kept small.
Asked about the numbers game, Berkeley's Guzman said the school hasn't reduced its incoming class. "Our J.D. class hasn't changed," and the extra money was only secondary, he said. "It is true that it is revenue-generating, but that's not what we had at the front of our minds," he said.
Although the cost of Berkeley's summer LL.M. program has yet to be set, according to the school, it's planning that a two-summer degree will cost the equivalent of its academic-year LL.M., most recently priced at $39,500.
For the summer, the school plans to admit 50 students in 2009 and double that the following year.
Faculty and administrators had researched the possibility of a summer LL.M. program for about three years, Guzman said. A critical point was ensuring a quality curriculum taught by UC-Berkeley School of Law faculty. Conceived as an equivalent to the regular LL.M. program the school offers, the summer program will be staffed by "full-blown professors" who are tenure-track faculty, Guzman said. "We haven't got them nailed down at the moment, but we've polled people and have gotten some positive reactions."
Courses will focus on U.S. law, legal writing and research, contracts, constitutional law, civil litigation and various electives, such as intellectual property law.
