Students and scholars in the program, including established lawyers, have an opportunity to broaden their knowledge and expertise in some of the most fascinating, important, and fast-changing areas of transnational law. Foreign lawyers will also have the opportunity to prepare themselves to take an American state bar exam where available.
The LLM program provides students with the fundamentals of international law and dispute resolution, international business transactions, comparative law, private international law, and, for foreign lawyers, United States law. Specialty subjects range from immigration and refugee law to international business transactions. The program offers students an unusual opportunity to apply comparative and international legal insights to domestic law topics. Foreign students, in particular, have an opportunity to study and apply subjects from WUCL’s rich array of domestic law courses.
Learning Outcomes
Curriculum
To be eligible to graduate, candidates for the LLM degree must successfully complete a total of 25 hours of credit. In shared classes, LLM students will be graded separately from JD students. Students will be identified by exam number only, but should be aware that when the number of LLM students in a class is small, blind grading may be difficult to maintain. Candidates with a foreign law degree are required to complete Introduction to American Law (Law 150) and Legal Research and Analysis (Law 151). English Methodologies for Lawyers (Law 152) is also a required course for candidates with a foreign law degree; however, those 3 credits do not apply towards the total 25 required credits for the program.
Option 1 | For candidates with a foreign law degree:
Required Courses:
- Introduction to American Law (150)
- English Methodologies (Law 152)
- Legal Research and Analysis (Law 151)
Limited Elective Courses:
Students must select at least 8 credit hours from among the listed courses:
- Admiralty (Law 210)
- Comparative Constitutional Law (Law 358)
- Comparative Law (Law 320)
- Conflict of Laws (Law 313)
- European Union Law (Law 383)
- Human Rights (Law 373)
- Immigration Law (Law 350)
- International Business Transactions (Law 318)
- International Environmental Law (Law 363)
- International and Domestic Sports Law (Law 224)
- International Law and Dispute Resolution (Law 316)
- Journal of International Law & Dispute Resolution (Law 420)
- International Law Moot Court Competition (Law 416)
- International Litigation and Arbitration (Law 372)
- Refugee Law (Law 3003)
- Selected Problems in International Law (Law 359)
General Elective Courses:
Students must select additional credit hours to reach 25 credit hours in total from other courses offered at the College of Law for which the perquisites have been satisfied or professor approval has been obtained, and may include up to four credits at AGSM.
Option 2 | For candidates with a foreign law degree:
Required Courses:
- Introduction to American Law (150)
- English Methodologies (Law 152)
- Legal Research and Analysis (Law 151)
Limited Elective Courses:
Students must select at least 6 credit hours from the following courses:
- Comparative Law (Law 320)
- Conflict of Laws (Law 313)
- European Union Law (Law 383)
- Global Sustainability (Law 386)
- International Business Transactions (Law 318)
- Selected Problems in International Law (Law 359)
General Elective Courses:
Students must select additional credit hours to reach 25 credit hours in total from the following courses, or up to four credits at AGSM:
- Contracts I (Law 103) or Contracts II (Law 104)
- Property (Law 108)
- Torts (Law 109)
- Business Organizations (Law 202)
- Selected Issues in Consumer Law (Law 264)
- Employment Law (Law 225)
- Intellectual Property (Law 315)
Option 3 | For candidates with a U.S. OR foreign law degree:
Required Courses:
(Candidates with a foreign law degree are required to complete the courses designated with an asterisk*) Introduction to American Law (150)*
- English Methodologies (Law 152)*
- Legal Research and Analysis (Law 151)*
- Selected Problems in International Law (Law 359)
Elective Courses:
(Students select at least 10 credit hours from the following list of courses. Not all courses are offered every year.)
- Admiralty (Law 210)
- Comparative Constitutional Law (Law 358)
- Comparative Law (Law 320)
- Conflict of Laws (Law 313)
- European Union Law (Law 383)
- Human Rights (Law 373)
- Immigration Law (Law 350)
- International Business Transactions (Law 318)
- International Environmental Law (Law 363)
- International and Domestic Sports Law (Law 224)
- International Law and Dispute Resolution (Law 316)
- Journal of International Law & Dispute Resolution (Law 420)
- International Law Moot Court Competition (Law 416)
- International Litigation and Arbitration (Law 372)
- Refugee Law (Law 3003)
The curriculum of each LLM candidate is subject to approval by the administration. Students select either the “A” track or the “B” track. In addition to the 12 hours of transnational courses required of students on both tracks, they must take additional courses as follows:
Track A (primarily for candidates with a foreign law degree): Students must take 12 hours of credit of “domestic law” courses, which may include up to four hours at the Atkinson Graduate School of Management (AGSM). The remaining one hour of credit may be from other domestic or transnational law courses offered at Willamette.
Track B (for candidates with a U.S. or foreign law degree): Students must take a total of 16 hours of credit from the list of transnational law courses. The remaining nine credit hours of credit may be from other domestic or transnational courses offered at Willamette.
All Options | Writing Requirement
Every Transnational LLM candidate must complete a carefully supervised paper on a topic related to their program option. In the preparation of the required paper, the candidate will work with a faculty member in the substantive field of the proposed paper.
The LLM Program Director may substitute appropriate courses based on the availability of faculty to teach existing courses or based on individual circumstances that apply to an individual LLM candidate.
Application
For assistance with the application and admission processes, please contact the Office of Law Admission at llm-admissions@willamette.edu or at (503) 370-6282.