Welcome to the LL.M. in U.S. and Global Legal Studies Program
Prof. Lewis Katz, Director
When Case Western Reserve University School of Law began the LL.M. program for foreign law graduates in 1992, we had three goals in mind: (1) to immerse qualified foreign lawyers in a year of U.S. legal education and to integrate those students with the American J.D. population so that each group could benefit most from the interaction; (2) to ensure that our LL.M. graduates are fully qualified at the end of their studies to participate in growing global economic opportunities; and (3) to create a family atmosphere in the LL.M. program that would sustain the foreign students during their time at the school. At the time we were one of the first American law schools to design a program especially for foreign graduate students. Our program has grown from three students that first semester to fifty students, with four hundred fifty graduates in 55 countries.
In ten years, we have achieved all three goals. Our foreign LL.M. students have selected courses across the broadest array of our J.D. curriculum. They have been assisted in these courses by J.D. mentors, and some lifetime friendships have been born. The Contracts section, "Basic American Contract Law," designed exclusively for LL.M. students, has prepared them for full participation in their other courses. And the "Doing Business in the U.S.A." course has introduced the LL.M. students to a very wide range of areas of U.S. substantive law in the context of a transnational problem requiring the development of a legal strategy and introducing the students to the negotiation process. The day each student spends in the state trial court has been a highpoint for each LL.M. student. Our comprehensive legal research and writing program prepares our LL.M. graduates for summer internships and international practice opportunities upon their return home. The summer internships which we arrange with law firms and corporate legal departments have allowed interested LL.M. students to immerse themselves in the U.S. legal culture and put into action what they have learned prior to returning home.
The success our students have achieved in the job market upon their return home is another proud legacy of our program. In Bangkok, one international law firm has hired eight of our graduates out of a 60-lawyer office, and our alumni are also represented in all of the other international law firms in Thailand. Other graduates in Netherlands and Moldova are employed by international consulting firms, Deloitte & Touche and KPMG. Our graduates in Russia and other eastern European countries practice with international law firms. And at least four of our graduates are judges; a Russian graduate is General Counsel of Citibank, Moscow; an Italian graduate is General Counsel of the largest oil company in Italy, and a Canadian graduate holds a very high-level position in the corporate legal department of ABB. This is just a short list of some of our graduates' professional accomplishments.
We are extremely proud of the family relationship that inevitably develops not only among the LL.M. students, but also between them and their J.D. mentors, and our Assistant Director, Ms. Adria Sankovic, and myself. Over the past several years, I have had the privilege of visiting some of our alumni in their home countries. On all of those visits, I felt that I was participating in a genuine reunion with close relatives living far away, and in each instance it was just as hard to say goodbye at the end of the visit as it was on graduation day. We are all proud that we have participated in the creation of a network of friendships that will last a lifetime.
