May 30 2008
foreign LLM’s again — with a twist
Just wanted to post this quickly from the New York Lawyer. I recently had a post that linked Donald Clarke’s PDF resource on the usefulness (or lack thereof) of having a Chinese LLM. Well, yesterday, the NY Lawyer published this article saying that foreign firms want staff their firms by having foreign attorneys with U.S. LLM’s. I suppose its an interesting turn of events:
Law firms with roots in the United States are increasingly tapping master of law degree programs here to recruit foreign lawyers for building out their international networks.
For instance, McDermott, Will & Emery, which was founded in Chicago and now has six offices outside the United States, this year is cultivating closer ties with U.S. law schools that offer so-called LL.M. programs for foreigners in the hopes of luring some of the graduates to its non-U.S. offices.
Firms are turning to the LL.M. programs as a source of foreign lawyers who have law degrees from their home countries and other requisite credentials, plus an understanding of the U.S. legal system and strong English-language skills, law school officials said.
While some large international firms have been recruiting from the programs for years, they’re expanding their use of them now at the same time that some newly global firms are coming to the idea.
The demand from firms for attorneys from certain countries rises or falls each year, depending on which areas of the world are experiencing the most growth, law school officials said. Firms currently are particularly interested in students from Germany, Brazil and China, said Lidija Rebic, the acting career adviser for the LL.M. program at Northwestern University School of Law.
In the past, many of the foreign LL.M. students simply got their degrees and perhaps took advantage of an automatic option to work for a year at a U.S. firm, but then headed home to a prior employer. Now, there are more opportunities for the students to join a new U.S. law firm employer permanently, school officials said.
So, for those of you wanting a Chinese LLM, the applicant pool is becoming more diverse than just U.S. JD’s with Chinese LLMs.
