Inside the Century-Old HLS Program That Quietly Churns Out World Leaders
Every year at Harvard Law School, less than 200 students graduate with a Master of Laws, or LL.M., the exclusive HLS degree that has quietly shaped governments, courts, and legal systems around the world.
Every year at Harvard Law School, fewer than 200 students graduate with a Master of Laws, or LL.M., the exclusive HLS degree that has quietly shaped governments, courts, and legal systems around the world.
The LL.M. program at HLS doesn’t often make headlines. Unlike HLS’ flagship J.D. program — which graduates 1,750 students every year and has dominated the American legal scene since its inception in 1817 — the LL.M. program is designed to further develop people who have already learned the basics of law.
HLS celebrated the program’s 100th anniversary last month, inviting its powerful alumni from all over the world for a two-day celebration. The roster of speakers read like a parade of United Nations guests, featuring leaders of Perú, Taiwan, and Luxembourg.
The Crimson interviewed seven LL.M. alumni from five countries to find out how the program quietly produces some of the world’s top leaders.
“It was a life-changing experience for me,” said Anurag Bhaskar, an LL.M. alum now serving in the Supreme Court of India. “Just the exposure of being around students from so many different countries and so many different cultures, legal backgrounds, I think that was very unique.”
A ‘Special Responsibility’
The LL.M. program at Harvard Law School began humbly. Established in 1923, HLS introduced the program to give advanced training to a cohort of only four U.S.-based students.
While the program grew in size in the next decades, it wasn’t until 1950 that HLS professor Paul A. Freund and HLS Dean Erwin N. Griswold began an effort to adopt a more international focus, believing HLS had a “special responsibility” to train graduates of foreign law schools.
Freund was himself a graduate of the LL.M. program. Griswold would later serve as dean of Harvard Law school, solicitor general for Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and the namesake for HLS’ Griswold Hall.
Today, Freund and Griswold’s experiment has fundamentally altered the character of the LL.M. program. Of this year’s class of 182 students, 98 percent are international, hailing from 69 countries.
Once they leave HLS, graduates go on to become prime ministers, justices, and influential lawyers all over the world. Today, more than 25 LL.M. graduates serve on the highest courts of 18 countries.
Some even come back to the Law School. Vice Dean Gabriella Blum, who has been suggested as an early candidate for the HLS deanship, graduated from the LL.M. program before becoming a tenured professor.
The success of the LL.M program relies on taking students at the top of the legal field. The LL.M. program website boasts that there are 13 supreme or constitutional court clerks and 19 Fulbright Scholars in this year’s class.
“The reality is, it’s from those who are in pretty good law firms, or who are like judges or prosecutors and so, those were the types of people that Harvard usually picks,” said Jennifer Yoo, a Korean lawyer specializing in international arbitration who graduated from the LL.M. program.
“I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” she said. “I think it’s just a criteria.”
But some students say these accomplishments stem from nepotism and connections rather than hard work.
“If one has parents who are able to get them internships, who are able to get them jobs, who are able to get them positions that initially are not necessarily accessible to everybody on merit, these things get elevated in those admission processes,” said Jeet Agarwal, an LL.M. alum and a technology lawyer from India.
Many LL.M. students rely on scholarships and funding to fund their year in Cambridge. Beatriz Garcia Quiroga, a lawyer from Spain, was awarded a full scholarship from a Spanish foundation.
Similarly, Isabella R. Mosselmans was awarded the Kennedy Memorial Trust scholarship to attend HLS after working as an immigration and asylum attorney in the U.K.
Mosselmans said her time in the LL.M. program was “one of the best years of my life.”
An International Cohort
Juan Felipe Wills, a lawyer from Colombia, was drawn to the program not just for its prestige but for the chance to learn from other legal systems.
“You study a little bit about the U.S. legal culture and the U.S. legal system,” said Wills, “but at the same time, you’re able to interact with people from countries such as Argentina, the United Kingdom, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan.”
Some LL.M. alumni said the opportunity to interact with a diverse group of students is one of the program’s biggest draws. Wills recalled conversations with Russian and Ukrainian LL.M students after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“To hear firsthand, from people from both Russia and Ukraine,” Wills said, “it was very fulfilling.”
Yoo said the program’s diverse group of students helped her grow.
“I now really have friends all over the globe,” Yoo said. “It’s kind of taught me that the world is broader than I may have thought,” she added.
For some students, the emphasis on U.S. law can feel limiting, with some international students wishing for a broader selection of courses that address global issues.
“Many of the courses were U.S. law-centered, which is obvious and makes sense because it’s a U.S. law school,” Yoo said.
“But I think I’ve noticed that some other U.S. law schools do have certain classes which deal with some a bit more international matters,” she added.
Still, Mosselmans said that “a lot of the courses really are relevant to my work today,” pointing to a course she took on the history of the conflict in Israel and Gaza.
A Year-Long ‘Cram’
With the program’s rigor, alumni say the LL.M.’s timeline often feels rushed. With just nine months to pack in academic work, social activities, and career development, students feel pressure to make every moment count.
“We wanted to enjoy ourselves, become friends with each other, become part of social activities, become part of school activities,” Yoo said. “At the same time, we had to take classes. There were just so many things that we had to cram into one year.”
“I only wish, honestly, the program was a bit longer, or there was an option to do a two-year LL.M,” Garcia said. “I think staying one year on campus might be too short.”
Agarwal recalled how he had to carefully manage his time.
“You need to really plan your year. You really need to sort of be on top of meeting professors,” he said.
Though some LL.M. students said faculty like Blum, David B. Wilkins ’77, and Elizabeth P. Kamali served as helpful mentors, others also said a more comprehensive orientation and stronger advising could help LL.M. students prepare for the intense year ahead.
“I wasn’t very well prepared in choosing the courses,” Bhaskar said. “There were so many opportunities, but I didn’t realize that until I was already there”
“I would have liked to have more support — personalized to my profile and my abilities. During my time at Harvard, I found that the advice that we got was too general and many times dependent on what was recommended for J.D.s,” said Garcia Quiroga.
“I would love to see Harvard making greater improvements in catering the job search to each candidate’s profile,” she added.
Some classes also cap the number of LL.M. students who can enroll. Yoo said one of her courses only allowed three LL.M. students, and she initially struggled because the J.D. students formed a more tight-knit group.
“Later on, I got to be friends with the J.D.s taking the same course as me, and it all worked out fine,” she said. “I felt that it would have been nicer if maybe there were more seats allocated to LL.M.s.”
Despite criticisms of program structure, all LL.M. alumni described the program as a “life-changing experience.”
“It was an eye opening experience. I had just so much fun, and I’d just learned so much during that one year,” said Yoo.
—Staff writer S. Mac Healey can be reached at mac.healey@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @MacHealey.
—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.