Washington University Law School Offers Online LLM for Foreign Lawyers
Washington University’s law school will offer an online master’s degree in U.S. law that is designed for foreign lawyers.
A press release calls the online program, set to begin enrolling students in 2013, “the first and only top-tier online LLM in U.S. law.” Florida Coastal College of Law also offers an online master’s in U.S. law, Insider Higher Ed reports. Several other law schools—including New York University, Loyola University Chicago and the University of Alabama—offer online master’s degrees in specific areas of law.
Foreign lawyers won’t have to leave their law practices to take the online classes, which will have no more than 15 students and live classroom sessions delivered by webcam. The program “provides an excellent grounding in U.S. law,” but is not intended as a path to a J.D., according to Inside Higher Ed and the New York Times.
About a dozen states allow some students with a Master of Law degree to take the bar exam, although in New York they aren’t eligible if they obtain the degree online, the Times says. In California, on the other hand, the university’s LLM grads will probably be allowed to take the exam, the newspaper says.
