Boston College Law School (BC Law)

The Law School

Since our founding in 1929, Boston College Law School has earned an international reputation for educational excellence and the highest standards of professionalism. The school is among the top few law schools in the U.S. in the number of applications it receives, and has an overall applicant-to-acceptance ratio that is among the most selective in the nation.

Our faculty includes authors of casebooks -- in tax, environmental law, and civil procedure, to name a few -- and other major academic books. Authors of articles too numerous to count, published in the country's leading law reviews. A former President of the International Society of Family Law. A Special Advisor to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Twelve members of the American Law Institute, the U.S.’s premier law reform organization. Advisors to governments and NGOs around the world. As importantly, though, our faculty are extraordinary teachers as well as scholars. Indeed, their primary mission is to mentor and teach our students, and they do it well.

Is Boston College the right school for you? Only you can answer that question, but here’s what we think is special about our school. It is not simply our faculty, as wonderful as they are. Nor is it simply our students, who are among the most talented in the world. Nor is it the great Jesuit university of which we are a part. Nor is it our beautiful campus, or our close proximity to Boston -- New England’s most cosmopolitan city.

Rather, it is our ethos. While we offer a world-class legal education, we put special emphasis on the ideals of social justice and public service. This approach makes for students who are at once highly credentialed and highly collegial in their relationships with each other and with the faculty. It also makes for a strong sense of community – a sense that springs from a shared respect for law as the cornerstone of a democratic society, and a shared respect for one another as students, scholars and practitioners of the law.

The Program

The Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree program is designed to immerse participants in the intricacies and flavor of the United States legal system, and help prepare them for the challenges of work in an increasingly global legal community. In this sense, it is directed primarily to lawyers and law graduates trained outside of the U.S. However, we also welcome applications from U.S.-trained lawyers who may uniquely benefit from advanced work here.

The program’s possibilities are as diverse as the students we hope to attract. LL.M. students may choose from among most of the courses in the Law School’s extensive curriculum, including both introductory and advanced courses. The range of options is enormous – from business law to human rights to international law and beyond. The program is a “general” one, in that we do not channel students into particular subject area tracks. However, the curriculum affords students ample opportunity to specialize in their fields of interest.

Students are required to complete at least 24 credits of work in residence during a single academic year. This includes a core course, “The United States Legal System”, which is required of all foreign-trained candidates. Students also must produce a piece of writing of a breadth and magnitude commensurate with the school’s upper-level writing requirement for J.D. students. This can be completed in one of the school’s regular seminars, or written independently under faculty supervision. LL.M. students also are encouraged to take a “Legal Research and Writing” course designed specially for them.  Otherwise, students study alongside their J.D. classmates – a true immersion experience in American legal education. 

Our LL.M.s thus get the best of both worlds.  On the one hand, they receive the individual attention that comes from participating in a small program (10 to 15 students in 2008-09).  On the other, they are full members of the broader BC Law community -- the next generation of leaders in legal practice, government, NGOs, the judiciary, law teaching, and industry. 

Entry Requirements

Admission to the LL.M. program is highly selective. We are most interested in applicants who have completed their prior legal studies with high rank and who intend to return to their home countries to contribute to the legal profession. Otherwise, we are ecumenical: we are equally interested in applicants pursuing careers in private practice, government service, the judiciary, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and legal scholarship.

At a minimum, applicants must have either

• graduated from a U.S. law school approved by the American Bar Association,
• obtained a full degree in law from a non-U.S. university, or
• be admitted to practice law in a country other than the U.S.

In addition, applicants whose native language is not English must have achieved a score of 600/250/100 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).

Application Procedure

Application forms and instructions may be downloaded from our web site at http://www.bc.edu/schools/law/admission/llmprogram/Applying.html. Alternatively, you may apply online at http://www4.lsac.org/lsacd_on_the_web/login/open.aspx?ID=KE933083L1489MO. If you are applying for enrollment in Fall 2008, the application deadline is March 1, 2008. However, we strongly encourage the submission of applications earlier than March 1. We anticipate that decisions on most applications will be made by April 15, 2008. Some applicants may be notified of our decision well before this date.

Tuition and Fees

The estimated cost of study for a single student during the 2007-08 academic year is $53,730. This figure consists of tuition of $36,510 and estimated living expenses of $17,200. It does not include the expenses of travel between the student’s home country and the Boston area. The comparable figures for the 2008-09 are likely to be higher. Applicants requiring financial assistance should investigate funding sources in their home countries well in advance.

Boston College Law School has a very limited amount of financial aid available to LL.M. students. For further information, please contact the LL.M. Office.

Location

The Law School's campus is an oasis in the midst of a bustling suburban and city landscape, a place where gentle stretches of green lawn and manicured gardens complement some of the most technologically advanced facilities available to law school students. Located on 40 acres of land in Newton, Massachusetts, the campus offers fast access by car or public transit to the city of Boston -- an international law student’s dream.

Founded in 1630, Boston is a blend of the past, present, and future. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings are interspersed among tall, modern office buildings, and the city is surrounded by a corridor of high-technology industries. As state capital and first city of New England, it supports a thriving legal practice in a broad range of fields. The area also boasts the greatest concentration of higher education institutions in the United States, and is a hub for the arts and culture, with world-renowned museums and a wide variety of sporting, musical, and theatrical events. Further afield is the New England countryside – legendary for its spectacular fall foliage, variegated coastline, and charming Colonial-era towns.