You become an international lawyer the way you become any lawyer: lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, which usually requires passing a bar examination, and the cross-border specialty is built on top of that license through the employers that do the work — government offices, firms, companies and public-interest organizations.
This page maps what the work involves, who hires international lawyers, which background helps, and the entry paths the sources behind it actually document.
What does an international lawyer do?
"International lawyer" describes the subject matter a seat works on, not a separate license — none of the licensing descriptions in this page's sources names a separate international credential — so start with the seat those sources document in detail.
The U.S. Department of State's Office of the Legal Adviser furnishes advice on "all legal issues, domestic and international", arising in the course of the Department's work — a legal office whose advice has to hold in both arenas at once.
The research behind this page describes it as a core federal employer for international and human rights lawyers.
That government seat is one side of the label.
The other side is the same law license applied to private cross-border work inside law firms and companies — and there the documented picture gets thinner: the sources read for this page include no task-level survey of "international lawyer" as a category.
What the employer data does show is where the profession's work sits: in BLS's 2025 table, legal services led the employer list for lawyers at 52%, ahead of self-employed lawyers (11%) and local, state and federal government (8%, 7% and 5%).
So the honest sketch of the work: the documented government side advises an institution whose decisions turn on both domestic and international law, and the private side is the same license applied to clients whose matters cross borders — with the advisory, drafting and dispute mix set by the employer rather than by the title.
Federal attorney jobs are classified in the GS-0905 General Attorney series, covering trial work, legal advice to an agency, and drafting regulations, contracts and legislative comments.
For where this field sits among the others, see the guide to types of lawyers and the wider attorney careers landscape — or, if you are still deciding, the piece on choosing a practice area.
Who hires international lawyers? Firms, government, in-house and nonprofits
Start with the honest caveat: BLS counts employers for lawyers as a whole, not by practice area, so no source read for this page says what share of international lawyers each employer type takes.
The employer mix it does measure, for 2025: legal services 52%, self-employed lawyers 11%, local government 8%, state government 7% and federal government 5%.
Government is where the subject matter is most visible in this page's sources.
The State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser furnishes advice on all legal issues, domestic and international, arising in the course of the Department's work — the research behind this page describes it as a core federal employer for international and human rights lawyers.
Mechanically, federal attorney hiring runs through the excepted service under Schedule A rather than competitive-service examining, and the roles sit in the GS-0905 series.
Law firms are the other documented base.
Firms of more than 500 lawyers are the single largest employer of new law graduates, taking more than one in five employed Class of 2025 graduates — and counting 251–500-lawyer firms, about one in four employed graduates started in a large firm.
Across all Class of 2025 law-firm jobs, firms of 501+ lawyers accounted for 33.2% and firms of 1–10 lawyers for 26.4%: a big-firm end and a long small-firm tail.
Those counts describe all new graduates, not international hires specifically.
In-house legal departments show up in the business-sector data: among Class of 2024 graduates in business-sector jobs, in-house lawyer was the most common job type at 22.6% of business jobs — though only 32.6% of those business-sector jobs required bar admission, a reminder that some legal-adjacent corporate roles sit outside licensed practice.
Nonprofit and NGO work is the piece the data covers least directly.
NALP's public-interest category took 9.0% of Class of 2025 jobs, and public service overall — government, public interest and judicial clerkships — accounted for 31.0%, but the sources read for this page don't define which employers sit in that category, so read the 9.0% as a profession-wide share rather than an international-specific one.
For the segment in depth, see our public interest law guide.
What background and courses help international lawyers?
Start from the license, because that part is fixed.
BLS lists the typical entry-level education for lawyers as a doctoral or professional degree, and its summary of licensure is that lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, which usually requires passing a bar examination.
None of the licensing descriptions in this page's sources names a separate international-law credential — the specialty is built on top of the standard license, not beside it.
The degree that recurs in this page's sources is the LL.M.
LSAC describes it as a graduate law degree: U.S. and Canadian students need a J.D. first, while international students need a first professional law degree such as an LL.B.
The one documented place it changes eligibility applies to internationally educated lawyers: in some U.S. states, those who earn an LL.M. may become eligible to take the bar exam, subject to each jurisdiction's rules.
What no source read for this page does is quantify how much an LL.M. weighs in private international-practice hiring — treat any blanket "you need an LL.M." claim as unverified, and read the postings for the employers you actually want.
Our explainers on what an LL.M. is and the LL.M. for foreign lawyers cover the degree itself.
For signals, the only published selection criteria in this page's sources are DOJ's own: its Honors Program says it weighs commitment to government service, academics, leadership, journal/moot court/mock trial, clinics, past employment and relevant extracurriculars.
Translated into law-school choices, the levers those criteria name are academics, journal or advocacy participation, clinics and relevant work history — places where an international interest can be demonstrated rather than asserted, though no source read for this page says how other employers of international lawyers weigh them.
- Electives your school offers in international and comparative subjects
- A clinic with real client or docket work you can name in interviews
- Journal, moot court or mock trial participation — named criteria in DOJ's Honors selection
- Summer positions in the offices you're targeting — BLS notes a successful summer job or internship may result in an offer after graduation
Licensing is set jurisdiction by jurisdiction
How do lawyers break into the field?
The entry levers this page's sources document are general rather than specialty-specific, because no source describes a distinct international-law entry credential or program.
BLS notes a successful summer job or internship during law school may result in an employment offer after graduation, and that judicial clerkships are typically 1- or 2-year terms some graduates take before practicing.
A clerkship also has program value: DOJ limits Honors Program eligibility to graduating law students and recent graduates who entered a judicial clerkship, graduate law program or qualifying legal fellowship within 9 months of graduation.
At the Department of Justice, the documented entry pipeline is the Attorney General's Honors Program — DOJ's entry-level attorney recruitment program, running since 1953.
It covers DOJ only: the sources read for this page don't document how the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser hires.
The window is short: for the 2026–2027 cycle, the application opened Aug 28, 2026 and closed Sept 8, 2026, submitted through DOJ's CORA system.
After the deadline, DOJ's published timeline runs interview invitations in early October, interviews from late October to mid-November, and offers from November on.
Two mechanical notes help when reading federal postings: federal "law clerk trainee" appointments exist for law graduates pending bar admission and may not exceed 14 months, and federal attorney hiring runs through the excepted service under Schedule A rather than competitive-service examining.
Calibrate expectations along two axes.
Federal hiring of new graduates fell sharply: NALP measured a 37.0% drop in graduates hired by the federal government excluding judicial clerkships, from nearly 1,100 in the Class of 2024 to about 690 in the Class of 2025 — so treat federal openings as one competitive path, not a plan with slack in it.
And geography compounds: 65.6% of employed Class of 2025 graduates worked in the same state where they attended law school, so where you study shapes which employers are realistically in reach.
Job market and demand
BLS publishes no count of international lawyers: it tracks the lawyer occupation as a whole and does not break employment, projections or pay out by practice area.
Any precise "number of international lawyers" or specialty growth-rate figure you encounter therefore came from someone other than BLS — treat it accordingly.
What the primary sources do measure is the profession.
Lawyers held about 863,700 jobs in 2025.
BLS projects 5% employment growth from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, with about 28,700 openings a year on average over that span, many from replacing workers who retire or change occupations.
BLS also expects some routine legal work to be automated but does not expect that to reduce overall demand for lawyers.
For the profession-wide outlook in depth, see our attorney job outlook article — this page stays on what the specialty can and cannot claim from the same data.
The entry-level market the Class of 2025 graduated into was strong by NALP's measures: 92.8% of graduates were employed about ten months after graduation, and 84.6% held jobs requiring or anticipating bar admission — the highest share since NALP's current job classifications began in 2001.
Geography is the last honest caveat.
The ABA counted 190,015 active lawyers in New York, 181,048 in California, 99,867 in Texas, 80,976 in Florida and 65,824 in the District of Columbia in 2025 — counts of where lawyers are, not of where international practice concentrates, which no source read for this page maps.
The profession's data answers the market question for lawyers overall; for the specialty, the postings themselves are the best demand signal you have.
Where to find international attorney jobs
Start wide: browse attorney jobs on LawFirmHires to see current openings across employers, and read each posting against the employer types in this page's second section — the advisory-to-dispute mix and the subject matter tell you which seat you're actually interviewing for.
Search more than one title: cross-border work can sit under a practice-area title rather than the word "international".
For the employers this page documents, go to the source: DOJ's own careers pages carry its Honors requirements and application window, and the State Department's own site is the place to check for its Office of the Legal Adviser — confirm current details there before you plan around them.
For the general path this page specializes — college through law school, the bar and a first legal job, in order — see how to become a lawyer.
Career information, not legal advice. The licensing and degree details here are occupation-level summaries; confirm current bar admission requirements with the bar admission authority in your state.