UNC designs master's degree for foreign lawyers

UNC School of Law is reaching out abroad to give law students at home a more worldly experience.

The school plans to introduce a one-year master of law degree — or LL.M — for foreign lawyers seeking training in American law.

Beverly Sizemore, the School of Law’s director of international programs, said the program seeks practicing lawyers from outside the U.S. who have already earned junior doctorate law degrees in their home countries and are already practicing.

“It’ll add to the law school experience for our JD students and faculty with some different perspectives on law and legal issues,” she said.

UNC’s is far from the first LL.M program to be offered in the nation.

Rob Mosteller, associate dean for academic affairs, said there are more than 100 LL.Ms across the nation.

Both Duke University and Wake Forest University have LL.M programs in place. Mosteller said he has been paying attention to Duke’s program for the past 15 years.

Sizemore said potential students from locales as varied as Qatar, China, Pakistan and South Kora have expressed interest in joining the program.

Participants would need to get J-1 or F-1 visas in order to join the program in the U.S. Sizemore said students would have to show proof of $54,860 to cover the cost of tuition and living expenses in order to gain entry to the country.

The program’s director, Michael Corrado, said UNC’s program would be bringing in exclusively foreign students. Many LL.M programs accept both foreign and domestic students.

He won’t be back to work with the program until May. Before then, he will be in Italy researching European law.

He said he believed he was tapped to head the program because of his experience in international law and his work creating UNC’s LL.M program.

Mosteller said the program will start slow, with three to seven students. He said the School of Law’s goal is to approach 25 students in the next five years.

“We want to fill it gradually and with quality,” he said.

Participants in the LL.M program will study for two semesters.

The program faces acquiescence — a type of approval — from the American Bar Association before it can be implemented, but administrators were confident the program would be given the green light.

Corrado hopes the program promotes the University’s brand abroad and gives its foreign students a new perspective on law.

“It is difficult to exaggerate the gap that exists between the way the law is taught and practiced in civil law countries … and the way it is taught and practiced here, and that gap is something that we will have to close for the students in our LL.M program,” he said via e-mail.

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