An LLM — Master of Laws — is a graduate law degree, per LSAC, the Law School Admission Council.
It is not an entry credential: U.S. and Canadian students need a JD first, while international students need a first professional law degree such as an LLB.
Below: who earns an LLM, what programs cost, the specialties they concentrate, and what the degree does — and does not do — for a legal career.
What is an LLM?
LLM stands for Master of Laws.
LSAC — the Law School Admission Council — describes it as a graduate law degree: a degree you add after already holding one in law, not an entry point into legal education.
The name marks its position.
"Master" signals graduate study; the degree it builds on differs by where you trained.
The entry rules are explicit.
Per LSAC, an American or Canadian student needs a JD before pursuing an LLM.
International students need a first professional law degree — an LLB, in LSAC's example — earned before they begin.
For U.S. students, the degree it builds on is the JD — covered in full on what a JD is — the degree LSAC calls the "first degree" in law, needed in almost all cases to practice in the United States.
The LLM sits one layer up: it assumes that first degree and adds graduate coursework on top of it.
One boundary to keep in view: neither degree is itself a license.
Practicing law in the U.S. requires admission under the rules of the jurisdiction where you work, which sets its own requirements separately from what any school awards.
This page covers the education; licensure questions belong with the bar admission authority in your state.
Who gets an LLM?
The entry rules split LLM students into two broad groups, defined by the degree each group arrives with.
- U.S. and Canadian law graduates. For an American or Canadian student, the requirement is a JD first, per LSAC. The degree is open to people who already hold the entry credential for U.S. practice and want graduate coursework beyond it — the structure points at deepening, not entering.
- Internationally educated lawyers. International students arrive with a first professional law degree earned abroad — an LLB, in LSAC's example. For them, an LLM at a U.S. law school is graduate study, much of it in American law, on top of a qualification earned somewhere else.
Timing varies with the goal, and that is worth being honest about when you weigh your own options.
A JD graduate who already knows the field can go straight through; a lawyer several years into practice who wants depth in the field their work has drifted toward can come back for it.
The entry rules are the same either way — what changes is what you want from the degree.
There is also a group defined by exclusion: under the entry rules LSAC describes, both routes begin with a law degree.
A bachelor's alone meets neither one, so the LLM is not a first degree out of undergrad.
One fork matters more than the rest for the second group.
LSAC notes that in some U.S. states, internationally educated lawyers who earn an LLM may become eligible to take the bar exam, subject to each jurisdiction's rules.
That sentence is as far as a national page can honestly take it: which states qualify, and on what terms, is decided jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and the rules change.
Bar-admission eligibility is jurisdiction-specific
How long is it and what does it cost?
The honest answer first: our research did not confirm standard figures for how long an LLM takes or what it costs.
Structure and pricing are set program by program, so the numbers worth planning around are the ones in each program's own materials.
What the verified data does cover is the layer beneath the LLM.
For the JD, most programs run three years full-time, and part-time programs take about four years, per LSAC.
For U.S. and Canadian students, that is the degree the LLM comes after.
On price, the ABA's Standard 509 disclosures for 2025 put full-time JD tuition at a median of $49,910 per year for residents, ranging from $11,338 to $85,368 — with a median of $53,640 for full-time nonresidents.
Those figures exclude fees and living costs, and they describe JD programs — they are not LLM tuition, and a JD median is not a quote for an LLM at any school.
What an LLM costs is whatever its school charges for it, which is why the program's own cost materials beat any national figure.
Ask each program you are considering for tuition, fees and total cost of attendance, and how the timeline changes between formats if more than one exists.
A published length is also worth reading precisely — what the calendar actually covers, and what happens if a term stretches.
Ask for the total, not the sticker
Popular specialties: tax and IP
The degree's name is generic — Master of Laws — but the study inside it can be anything but.
A program's curriculum is where its focus lives: the same degree name can sit over very different study depending on what a school concentrates its graduate curriculum in.
Tax and intellectual property are two fields that fit this pattern.
Each has a deep, technical body of law of its own — the kind of material that rewards concentrated graduate study.
Lawyers already headed into one of these fields, or practicing in one and wanting depth beyond the day-to-day, have an obvious question for any program they look at: how much of it is actually in my field?
That question is the useful one, whatever your specialty.
Compare programs on what they teach in it: the courses listed, the faculty who teach them, and whether the depth is real or a handful of survey classes around a general curriculum.
If you do not yet know your field, the specialty choice is worth settling before the program choice — it changes which programs you should be comparing.
One caution to carry into the next section: none of this changes the entry structure.
A specialty LLM is still a graduate degree on top of a first law degree, and our research did not verify hiring-outcome data for any LLM specialty — so treat a claim that a particular degree is required for a particular field as something to check, not assume.
Does an LLM help you get hired?
Start with what we cannot say: our research did not confirm employment-outcome data for LLM graduates — no verified placement rates, no verified salary premium, no verified employer-preference figures.
Before you enroll, ask each program for its outcomes data, and ask how the school collects and defines the numbers it reports.
What the degree's structure does establish is the baseline.
LSAC calls the JD the first degree in law, needed in almost all cases to practice in the United States, and the LLM's own entry rules start with a law degree.
For a U.S.-trained lawyer, that makes the LLM an addition to the practice baseline — graduate coursework after the entry degree — not a replacement for it.
For internationally educated lawyers, the concrete fork is the bar-eligibility question from earlier: in some U.S. states, an LLM may figure into bar-exam eligibility, subject to each jurisdiction's rules.
Outside that jurisdiction-specific question, what the degree does for a U.S.-facing career is not something a national page can promise in either direction.
That leaves the practical test, which is one you can run yourself: read the requirements on the job listings for the roles you actually want.
Listings show whether a graduate credential is part of the profile employers ask for in your target field — and at that point the degree question stops being abstract.
If you are weighing the move now, our attorney job listings show the roles law firms are hiring for today.
Career information, not legal advice. Program lengths, costs and bar-admission rules change — confirm current details with the law schools and the bar admission authority in your state before you act on anything here.