Frequently Asked Questions - LLM US Legal Studies

The cost for 24 units is on a per-unit basis. See tuition and fees for the current rate. If you are preparing for the CA or New York bar exam, you will be advised to take specific courses that are tested on the bar exam, including US Constitutional Law, Evidence, Professional Responsibility, and other courses required of our JD students including Property, Remedies, Practical Legal Writing, and Civil Procedure. Each semester you may also take an elective from among all the other non-bar courses in the school, including Environmental Law or Intellectual Property law, but for the bar, we urge you to focus on the bar courses first, and then come back and study other courses if you are still working in the US after you have passed the bar exam. No, many students do want that credit added to their resume to increase their chances of getting work with international firms back home. Others plan to stay in the US for a few years to get experience; for those students. We strongly advise that they take the bar exam. But we have over 100 successful graduates who have gone back to the home country and gotten better job opportunities on the strength of the LLM alone. One of our most popular Concentrations in US Legal Studies is Corporate and Commercial Law. Students take such courses as Business Associations, Mergers and Acquisitions, Securities Regulation, and Anti-Trust Law or Bankruptcy, and combine them with International Business Transactions, International Trade Regulation, and European Union or Far East Trade Law for a comprehensive view of international and US business law.

Another popular area of study is our LLM in Intellectual Property Law. Students may study anything from bio-technology law to sports law to Internet law in this program. And with global climate change an increasingly strong challenge to our economic, social and even physical well-being, more students are choosing our LLM in Environmental Law. In fact, we have had Fulbright scholars from France and Vietnam, many students from Africa, and other European and Asian nations graduate from our Environmental Law program, recognized as one of the top programs in the US by US News and World Report for most of the past few years.

Surprising to some is the popularity of our LLM Taxation program, but in fact, for students from countries where codes are the primary source of law, US Taxation is very popular. In fact, for many years Golden Gate taught Tax law to lawyers from the Ministry of Taxation in China as they were bringing the Tax Codes of China into the international trade world.

With our LLM in International law, our many exchange programs with universities overseas, and our delightful San Francisco location, we offer a huge array of choices for the 25-50 new foreign students we admit each year to our LLM programs.

If you have a question you would like posted here, contact Prof. Leslie Burton and I will answer it. No, attorneys already licensed by the state of California may be accepted into the LLM in US Legal Studies program. They may be graduates of California accredited schools, or even non-accredited California law schools and correspondence schools, as long as they have passed the California bar exam. The admission committee will review each application. Only qualified graduates of California accredited schools may be admitted to the LLM programs. California also has unaccredited schools that have registered with the CA bar, but graduates of those schools do not qualify for admission to the LLM programs at Golden Gate. We can send you information about housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Students sometimes share apartments. We have a housing office and some good ideas, but we do not have any student housing. we work with new students during the weeks before classes begin to be sure they have settled in to appropriate housing. "Law clerk" is a term generally used to refer to a person who is studying to be a lawyer and who is doing legal work under the supervision of a lawyer. The legal work may include legal research and writing, meeting with clients, attending depositions, appearing in court, and other tasks. The law clerk will be a lawyer when s/he passes the bar exam and otherwise meets the requirements of the state bar.

Interns, externs, and clinical students are all law clerks as described above. The term "intern" is used when the student is working in a law firm, government agency, public interest organization, bank, legal department of a corporation, or other legal office. The term "extern" is used when the student is working for a judge or a court. The term "clinical student" is used when the student is receiving academic credit for the work and is, thus, also being supervised by a professor from the law school. Through our Curricular Practical Training (CPT), you can begin work for pay in a legal office after you complete the courses, Introduction to US Legal System and Graduate Legal Research. Our Law Career Services office helps you prepare your application materials and search for a job. Some students find jobs quickly, but for others it takes longer - it depends on the job market, your abilities, and your persistence.


Golden Gate University (GGU) School of Law is fully accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA)