Originally published in Student Lawyer magazine, December 2001 (Vol. 30, No. 4). All rights reserved.

A Higher Degree

LL.M. programs help students specialize in various aspects of law. Whether they're
worth an additional year of schooling depends on a number of considerations

by Barry E. Katz

When Ashley Smith entered Southern Methodist University School of Law six years ago with a bachelor's degree in finance, she figured she'd wind up practicing corporate law or doing some other type of transactional work. But by her third year, she had become disillusioned and was looking for something more.

"When I left law school, I felt like I had a general knowledge of the law and no knowledge of anything in particular," she says. "I knew I wanted to work with kids, but I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do."

So after three grueling years as a J.D. student, Smith signed up for-gasp!--one more year of school. She entered Loyola University Chicago School of Law's child and family law graduate program in 1998 and got her LL.M., or master of laws, degree in 1999.

Today, the 28-year-old Tulsa, Okla., native works at the Cook County Public Guardian's Office in Chicago, representing abused and neglected children in child protection proceedings. She spends half her time in juvenile court and the rest of her time visiting children's homes and schools and working with social services agencies. She has 250 children in her caseload, but the rewards are immeasurable.

"For me, there just seems to be something wonderfully noble about working for kids," she says. "Children are a wonderful thing…. When you tell people that you represent children, all of a sudden you're saving the world."

It's a job, she says, she probably wouldn't have gotten without her LL.M.

"I didn't do any juvenile work while I was in law school," Smith says. "[The LL.M.] was a big factor in my interviews…. I think that it demonstrated I was interested and committed to juvenile law, that I had bothered to go on to a fourth year and get my LL.M."

Sure, one more year of school might seem unthinkable at this point. But it might be worth a look. More and more J.D. students are opting to go directly into graduate work, believing that extra degree after their name will boost their job prospects. In 1981, just 669 students were awarded LL.M.s, according to the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. Last year, 3,464 students walked away with LL.M.s-an increase of 1,021 since 1995 alone.

The LL.M. degree is predominantly a means for lawyers from overseas to come to the United States and study a particular aspect of American law. However, of last year's LL.M. graduates, 45 percent graduated from U.S. law schools.

Most LL.M. programs are geared toward a specialty. As of last year, more than 20 law schools, for example, offered LL.M.s in taxation. Only one, St. John's University School of Law, had a program focusing exclusively on bankruptcy, and only George Washington University Law School offered an LL.M. in government procurement law.

To get a sense of the variety of programs offered this year, visit the ABA's legal education web site at www.abanet.org/ legaled and click on "post J.D."

"[An LL.M.] allows you to specialize in a highly focused way," says Pavel Wonsowicz, assistant director of career services at Vermont Law School, which offers an LL.M. in environmental law. "It's a great road to take to learn fields such as taxation, health care, and intellectual property law in an exhaustive way and market yourself as a bit of a specialist, even though you don't have a ton of practical experience.

"It allows doors to be opened for you because of that specialized education-and because your pure knowledge base is probably greater than that of some of the people the employer employs. And that's a very valuable way to market yourself."

An LL.M. isn't for everybody. In fact, career counselors and post-J.D. program directors say, J.D. students should think long and hard before committing to another year of study right after law school. They'll not only have to shell out another year's tuition, but, quite probably, forego a year's salary. Students are advised to discuss their plans with law school career officers.

"I've seen mixed success stories on LL.M. programs," Wonsowicz says. "Who shouldn't get one is someone who thinks an LL.M. will make up for a past weakness in their record-someone who had, say, a poor GPA who thinks, 'All I need to get into the big firms is to get an LL.M. from NYU, and that name recognition will get me in the door.'

"Not necessarily, because those law firms or other employers still look at law school GPAs and law school achievement, as well as undergrad achievement. So the students who think [an LL.M.] is going to erase any prior slip-up often are mistaken, unless they excel amazingly at the program or they get into an outrageously good one."

Too many students spend a year getting their LL.M.s only to find that the big, prestigious firms they want to join still aren't interested in them. They often wind up in the same types of jobs they would have gotten after law school anyway, Wonsowicz says.

"Think about the field and how much an LL.M. will help," he says. "In some fields, an LL.M. is highly desirable. Environmental law is very scientific, and getting that advanced training helps. Tax law is incredibly complex and very fluid, so getting a specialized education in it can help."
Many students sign up for graduate work believing that an LL.M. will be their ticket to a great teaching job. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

"Our experience has been that [an LL.M.] has enhanced our graduates' ability to get into teaching," says Diane Geraghty, director of child and family law programs at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Geraghty says one recent graduate landed a teaching job at the University of Arkansas and is now director of the university's child and family law mediation program.

But Wonsowicz warns that an LL.M. is no guaranteed entrée into teaching. Law schools hiring professors tend to be more interested in an applicant's overall academic record, practice experience, teaching experience, and potential for scholarly achievement.

Joanna Baltes believes her LL.M. in tax law from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1999 gave her an edge in getting hired as a clerk to U.S. Tax Court Judge L. Paige Marvel in Washington, D.C.

"For most people, I think the LL.M. is one of the only ways to get this particular job because in tax court, the only types of cases they hear are tax-related," says Baltes, who earned her LL.M. right after her J.D. "So they really look for people who have some kind of [tax] background, and if it's not working in that field for a couple of years, then certainly the LL.M. experience really helps. It gives you a broad background in a lot of different areas of tax."

LL.M.s are especially popular in the highly complex and ever-changing field of tax law. Baltes says most of her colleagues at tax court have LL.M.s.

"I think I would have been able to do [this job without an LL.M.]," she says. "Whether or not I would have been able to get an interview to get the job, I'm not sure. A lot of the judges really want to make sure their clerks have the requisite background in tax, and the LL.M. is a great indication that you do, because a lot of law schools do not offer tax classes for the J.D. students. You might have been able to take one or two classes in tax, but that's not very much of a background to be able to do the type of work we do here. So I think the LL.M. really gets you that interview and opens the door for you."

During those interviews, potential employers often spend time quizzing job candidates about their LL.M. experience. Sometimes the work students do in their LL.M. program is the clincher in getting hired.

Andrew Shaffer, a bankruptcy associate with Mayer, Brown & Platt in New York City, says his interviewers were particularly interested in the master's thesis he wrote as an LL.M. student at St. John's University School of Law.

"I wrote my LL.M. thesis [on fiduciary obligations of directors at insolvent or nearly insolvent companies], which was part of the requirements, and it got published," Shaffer says. "I spent a lot of time on it. I got a pretty good amount of questions about that…. It's sort of a sexy issue right now, to bankruptcy lawyers anyway. It comes up a lot…. Spending time on it, I think, really showed that I was willing to get my hands dirty."

After getting his J.D. from the University of Dayton in 1998, Shaffer found that few firms were hiring bankruptcy lawyers because the economy was doing so well. He entered the LL.M. program a year later.

The graduate work, he says, was critical in his hiring. "I wouldn't be here without it," he says.
Students entering LL.M. programs right after law school often find the climate of learning to be much different from their previous three years.

"When I got to my LL.M. year, it was a much more nurturing environment," Smith says. "There were only nine of us in my program, and here we were with almost as many child-law professors working at Loyola as there were students…. They were so supportive of everything we did. It was really a we-want-to-help-you attitude….

"Getting to the LL.M. program, you get to spend one year studying only what you're interested in. You don't have any other requirements, just the classes you came to take. And you're surrounded by people who want you to succeed in this area that they love or they wouldn't be doing it.

"By the end of it, I felt like I went out there really knowing and understanding things about the juvenile system that most people have to go through lots of years of working to pick up on. And I had professors and contacts who really supported me in finding a job exactly where I wanted to go."

Baltes found her LL.M. experience to be more professional than her time as a J.D. student, in part because some of her fellow students had spent years practicing law before deciding to go back to school.

"I think the professors have different expectations," Baltes says. "They assume some level of experience at that point…. There's a nice combination [in the classes] of people who had, maybe, 10 or 15 years' practice experience as an attorney and then students like me who had come straight from the J.D. program."

Like Smith, some people wind up in LL.M. programs after their interests or expectations change while in law school. Others, like Shaffer, find the job market inhospitable. Still others, like Baltes' LL.M. colleagues, are practicing lawyers looking to take a mid-career turn.

That's what Kathleen Knepper, in-house counsel at Boone Hospital Center in Columbia, Mo., did. She got an LL.M. in health law at Saint Louis University School of Law 16 years after graduating in 1979 with a J.D. from DePaul University. In between, Knepper worked as a lawyer with the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety, then landed a job as a prosecutor.

"I saw another 20 years of my career ahead of me and didn't want to stay in the criminal area," says Knepper, who went to SLU part time and finished in two years. "I was never really interested in private practice. So when I looked at my history and, in particular, my interests, health law interested me, and I thought it might be a way to make a career shift at that point in my life.

"I really liked the opportunity that was offered to me at Saint Louis U. because I was able to continue to work in the state's attorney's office half time while I went to school half time."
Some see value in practicing law for a time before seeking an LL.M., rather than going into graduate work straight out of law school. In some cases, employers will help pay for an employee's LL.M. They look on it as an investment; in the end, they'll end up with a more knowledgeable lawyer.

"If [a student] hasn't worked at all, my recommendation would be to get some work experience [before an LL.M.]," Knepper says. "I just think real-life experience helps you understand better who you are, what you're really interested in, the kind of career you really might want to pursue. LL.M.s are so specialized that I think it would be unusual for somebody to know themselves so well that it would be apparent to them without ever getting out in the world and experiencing the practice of law."

Wonsowicz agrees. "One of the things that employers often bemoan about law students is that it takes them a number of years to learn the practice of law," he says. "Law school is so focused on learning to think and write analytically; it's a different set of skills that you need out there to practice, because now you're not only thinking analytically, you have to think persuasively as well and advocate on behalf of clients. So oftentimes, in your first two years of lawyering, you really are getting your sea legs.

"To then apply to an LL.M. program makes a little bit of sense because you've been out in the world, you've seen what the practice of law is like, and it's very different from talking about legal policy in the classroom with a professor and your peers. In some circumstances it does make sense to learn what the practice of law is like and then say, 'I've done a little environmental law' or 'I've done a little tax law and I really want to focus on that. I know what that life is like and I want it. So I'll go for an LL.M. and get it.'

"In other circumstances, if you have a very strong conviction that you're going to be, say, an intellectual property attorney, then why waste time? Go out and get that LL.M. and then get into the field you want to be in."

Smith knows she made the right choice.

"My first client ever, I think he was 21/2," she says. "I was just out of law school. I went out to the foster home to meet this little guy, and he crawled into my lap and started introducing me to his teddy bear. How many of my friends from law school got to have that client experience?"