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Introduction1
The number of Colombian lawyers pursuing a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in the United States has increased during the last 20 years.2 Colombian legal graduates pursue this degree to advance their social, economic, and professional status; learn about a different legal system and culture; gain practical experience; practice and learn a second language; expand their professional networks; among other reasons. Once they obtain a master's degree, legal graduates will have better professional opportunities and higher wages. More importantly, LL.M. degrees can provide social mobility to middle and low-class Colombian legal graduates and reaffirm the position occupied in the legal field by upper-middle- and upper-class legal graduates.
The legal education literature has addressed why U.S. universities are at the forefront of graduate legal education and the career paths taken by LL.M. and Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.) graduates, the history of LL.M. programs3, and other related subjects. This paper contributes to the conversation by addressing the selection requirements of U.S. LL.M. programs and the effects they produce in the legal graduate's home countries. Hence, this paper asks: what are the selection requirements of U.S. LL.M. programs? And how do selection requirements reproduce social hierarchies in a country such as Colombia?
These questions are important for several reasons. First, LL.M. degrees are among the most important graduate degrees for lawyers worldwide. Therefore, the increasing number of international students pursuing the degree requires us to evaluate its positive and negative impacts. Second, given the importance of the degree, discussions of legal education cannot be limited to Juris Doctor (J.D.) programs (professional programs); the discussions must address the social consequences of master's and doctoral degrees, and the recent trend of international students pursuing J.D.s. Finally, proposals to improve legal education cannot ignore international LL.M. students because they are vital to U.S. law schools. Therefore, discussions on democratizing legal education and teaching methods, among others, must address these concerns regarding graduate legal education.
Case Selection and Research Design
I selected Colombia as a case study because it provided useful manifestations4 of the social consequences of LL.M. programs. Hence, Colombia is a useful case study for five reasons: first, the number of Colombian lawyers pursuing these degrees in the U.S. has significantly increased in the last 20 years. 5 Second, transnational legal education is highly valued by Colombian legal graduates, law firms, law schools, and public institutions, among others. Third, studying abroad provides Colombian lawyers with symbolic, academic, and social capital.
Fourth, the Colombian Government seeks to attract foreign investment through legal change (i.e., legal transplants) in corporate law, criminal law, securities regulations, and so on, inspired by the U.S. legal system. LL.M. graduates can, therefore, elaborate legal transplants because of their knowledge of the U.S. legal system.6 Finally, foreign law firms and corporations interested in investing in Colombia hire Colombian law firms and lawyers. Thus, lawyers with LL.M. degrees are an asset to law firms because foreign companies will prefer firms that hire LL.M. graduates, given their knowledge of the Colombian and U.S. legal systems.
This paper relies on the following conceptual and methodological orientations. First, the article studies LL.M. degrees as a subfield of the juridical field. For that purpose, I will describe the rules of the LL.M. game subfield established by U.S. universities by relying on qualitative data such as the universities' descriptions of their selection mechanisms and admission costs. Second, I will use my personal experience as an LL.M. graduate, which provided me with first-hand knowledge of the rules of the LL.M. game subfield. Finally, the paper uses primary and secondary quantitative and qualitative data to describe four effects LL.M. selection standards produce on Colombian social hierarchies.
This paper is organized as follows. In section II, I explain the theoretical considerations of the article. Then, in section III, I conduct a qualitative description of the rules of the LL.M. game by presenting the selection criteria and the costs of the program. After addressing the selection criteria, section IV explains how they impact the Colfuturo loan program. I selected Colfuturo because it provides one of the most significant loans for Colombian graduate students to finance their graduate education abroad. Using Colfuturo's public data (external data) for 2018 and 2019, I describe how the LL.M. programs' selection criteria impact the loan program. During those periods, I show that the primary beneficiaries were middle- and upper-class legal graduates (this paper did not address the 2020 and 2021 periods).
Section V analyzes the different criteria contributing to social reproduction in the legal field. I focus on four criteria: the English proficiency requirement, grades, C/V, letters of recommendation, and the LL.M. degree validation procedure (the administrative process by which the Colombian Secretary of Education recognizes foreign degrees).
Using primary and secondary quantitative research data, this section shows the social reproduction effects of LL.M. degrees. By social reproduction, I mean three things: first, the selection criteria of the LL.M. programs unintendedly benefit upper-middle- and upper-class students. Second, LL.M. graduates will be hired by law firms and universities, which will help future graduates of these institutions and firms get interested in pursuing LL.M. degrees. Finally, LL.M. degrees will function as a contested mechanism of distinction. Let me explain what I mean by this.
I start from the premise that there is a process of democratization of legal education in Colombia (I do not address whether this is occurring. Even if it is not, the number of middle- and lower-class students pursuing LL.M. degrees has increased, as I will show below). Thus, middle- and lower-class students attending law school in Colombia have likely increased. Moreover, there was an increase in legal graduates who pursue LL.M. degrees or other graduate education to advance their careers.7 However, I argue that one of the unintended effects of this democratization process was that upper-middle- and upper-class legal graduates sought mechanisms to distinguish themselves from middle- and lower-class legal graduates.8 LL.M. degrees became one of those mechanisms.
Hence, I argue that LL.M. degrees operate as a mechanism of distinction9 in the legal field in two ways. First, the degree itself (i.e., the diploma) serves as a distinction mechanism by providing foreign graduates with explicit and implicit skills and capitals, such as knowledge of a second language, transnational social capital, prestige, economic capital, and symbolic capital.
However, when LL.M. degrees become accessible to middle- and lower-class legal graduates due to loans such as the ones provided by Colfuturo or university grants, the institution where you obtained your degree becomes the second mechanism of distinction.10 The legal field will generally value legal graduates with LL.M. degrees from tier 1 universities (I explain what this means below). I note that this is not necessarily the case because there could be instances in which the institution is not relevant (e.g., when law firms hire graduates regardless of the institution where they obtained the degree. For the firm, what matters is that the lawyer has an LL.M. degree).
Finally, I use the term contested mechanism for the following reason: even though LL.M. degrees might retrench social hierarchies during certain periods, this is not a necessary effect. Lower- and middle-class legal graduates are not passive actors; they understand the importance of the degree and its multiple professional and personal possibilities. Additionally, they are aware of the transformation and democratization of legal education produced by discussions on gender, class, and race (this paper does not address whether this is occurring in Colombia). Hence, some students can pursue the degree because it has the potential to unsettle and contest social hierarchies in the legal field. This also means that the degree has a contradictory nature: it can serve as a mechanism of social reproduction and contestation of the social hierarchy. However, as this paper shows, it is currently reproducing social hierarchies. Finally, in section VI, I explain the conclusions the paper reached.
Two caveats are relevant at this point. First, the data I gathered to describe the Colfuturo loan is public and available on their website. I did not participate in Colfuturo's collection of data nor designed their methodology. Furthermore, I did not receive any kind of financial assistance to conduct this study, nor will I perceive any benefit from it. Second, as Patton notes, personal experience and engagement are appropriate mechanisms of data collection and fieldwork strategies because the researcher "has direct contact with and gets close to the people, situation, and phenomenon under study."11 Hence, my experience as an LL.M. graduate and a Colfuturo beneficiary provided me with first-hand knowledge to collect data and understand the game's rules.
The Framework of Analysis: LL.M. Degrees as a Transnational Subfield of the Legal Field and Transnational Academic Capital
In this paper, I study LL.M. programs as a subfield of the legal field. Bourdieu defines the field as "an area of structured, socially patterned activity or 'practice.'"12 Moi defines it as the "space in which a game takes place, a field of objective relations between individuals or institutions who are competing for the same stake."13 A field constitutes a "space of structured relations in which the positions of individuals or schools of thought were defined in terms of their differential relationship with other participants in the field."14 In simpler terms, a field is a social space where people interact, and transactions and events occur.15 In this space, actors will use strategies to improve or maintain their positions.16
Bourdieu claimed that "The juridical field is organized around a body of internal protocols and assumptions, characteristic behaviors and self-sustaining values"17 or, as Terdiman puts it, a "legal culture."18 Furthermore the "world of the law" establishes its own rules and professional requirements transmitted by tradition, education, and experience.19 Hence, the law is a field.
For Bourdieu, the actors in the juridical field are competing for the right to determine the law.20 This right is determined by "a symbolic struggle between professionals possessing unequal technical skills and social influence."21 According to Bourdieu, this struggle leads to two divisions. On the one hand, social divisions among professionals and laypeople. On the other hand, the competition among the professionals that integrate the legal field, such as practitioners (including judges and practitioners) and professors (this competition depends on the legal tradition).22
However, I claim that there is one further distinction23 between the legal actors in the struggle to determine the law, different from the distinction between practitioners and professors: legal actors with more or less technical knowledge or competence. Some legal actors will have more technical competence than others in the struggle to determine the law, and thus will have more influence in the discussions. What, who, and how this technical competence is determined depends on the legal culture and system.
With this consideration in mind, my claim is that LL.M. degrees serve as a distinction mechanism in the legal field because they provide technical knowledge or competence, which increases the degree holder's academic, symbolic, and social capital. This distinction -technical competence- operates as a scale: actors with higher technical competence will occupy a higher position in the legal field. Additionally, this distinction, which seems objective and based on knowledge of the law, conceals the social structures favoring certain legal graduates, allowing them to obtain higher levels of technical competence. This technical competence gives certain legal actors (i.e., upper-middle- and upper-class legal graduates) the necessary capital to distinguish themselves from other actors and monopolize "the right to determine the law."24
The distinction provided by the degree leads to the hierarchization of the legal profession. For example, in theory, an upper-class lawyer who graduated from a top-ranked law school in Colombia with high TOEFL scores and who worked for the Colombian Government will have a high chance of admission into a top-tiered U.S. law school. In their statement of admission, the lawyer will argue that they will fix or contribute to Colombia's legal system by transplanting a legal institution, working as an academic, or as a civil servant. Once they have obtained their degree from a top-tiered institution and return to the country, they will have the social, educational, symbolic, and economic capital to occupy multiple positions in the public and private sectors and as law professors.
Additionally, I study LL.M. degrees as subfields of the legal field for two reasons. First, and mentioned above, LL.M. degrees provide legal graduates with technical competence and educational, social, and economic capital to compete for the right to determine the law.25 Hence, the degree serves a primary purpose in the legal field and possibly in the broader political field (because lawyers can become advisors for governmental institutions). Outside these fields, the degree loses much of its importance. Second, I study LL.M. degrees as a subfield to avoid a proliferation of fields.
In addition to studying LL.M. degrees as a subfield of the legal field, I analyze them as a form of transnational capital, following Susana Santos and Anne Schippling.26 LL.M. programs are transnational because globalization and capitalism have transformed and shaped the legal profession and legal education. For Santos and Schippling, "transnational capital is a form of capital within the Bourdieusian framework" because it allows the capital's holder to engage in globalized social arenas.27
Santos and Schippling encountered several manifestations of transnational capitals: incorporated forms (language skills and cosmopolitan mindsets); institutionalized forms (international jobs and credentials); and objectivated forms (possession of foreign texts and objects).28 It also provides the degree holder with social capital that extends beyond the country where they obtained their degree. The degree also provides them with "social recognition and prestige"29 that can be transformed into transnational symbolic capital.
I extend Santos and Schippling's framework to argue that LL.M. degrees are a form of transnational academic capital. On the one hand, LL.M. degrees in their institutionalized form -i.e., the diploma itself- can be studied as academic capital. On the other hand, the field is transnational for three reasons. First, multiple universities worldwide offer LL.M. degrees. These institutions are competing to attract international students. The university's prestige and position in rankings such as Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education, and other factors influence the applicant's decision to choose a specific institution.
Second, U.S. LL.M. programs also compete with graduate degrees in the lawyers' home country. This leads to issues such as the recognition of foreign degrees (which I explain below), academic requirements, local law schools' possibilities to compete against foreign universities, and so on. The key point is that globalization has transformed legal education, making it a transnational service in which universities worldwide compete to attract foreign legal graduates.
Finally, both the legal profession and law firms are global. U.S. law firms continue to expand to international legal markets and need legal graduates who can practice in multiple jurisdictions.30 The LL.M. degree provides graduates with the required qualifications to practice in those jurisdictions. For example, foreign graduates can practice law in several U.S. states (e.g., California and New York).31 Additionally, these law firms might be interested in collaborating with firms that hire LL.M. graduates or lawyers who have the degree. The same applies to local law firms resembling U.S. big-law firm models.
LL.M Degrees: The Rules of the Game
Description of the LL.M. Programs
According to the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), an LL.M. is a "graduate qualification in the field of law. The LL.M. was created for lawyers to expand their knowledge, study a specialized area of law, and gain international qualifications if they have earned a law degree outside the U.S. or Canada."32 LL.M. degrees or Master of Laws are pursued by lawyers who already hold a Juris Doctor (J.D.), graduate-entry professional degree, or a bachelor's in law after several years of practicing or teaching law. Some of them have also pursued graduate education (master's degrees or specializations) in different branches of law.33
Carole Silver describes LL.M. degrees as an add-on for foreign-trained lawyers serving multiple functions in developing their careers.34 For example, these programs provide professional networks that enable graduates "to connect with elite national and international law firms."35 This symbolic, academic, and social capital raises their status in their home country and teaches them legal terms that are critical for participation in the legal market36.
Even though LL.M. degrees are important for foreign lawyers, they are highly unregulated in the U.S.37 This lack of regulation is not a minor concern because over 150 U.S. law schools offer graduate degrees for international students.38 For example, the American Bar Association (ABA) oversees U.S. law schools' accreditation process.39
However, this accreditation does not extend to LL.M. programs: "the content and requirements of those degrees, such as an LL.M., are created by the law school itself and do not reflect any judgment by the ABA accrediting bodies regarding the quality of the program."40 Hence, law schools are free to determine their admissions criteria, the structure of the program, the course offering for the programs, and so on.41
Instead of accreditation, the ABA provides acquiescence to LL.M. programs if the law school is fully approved and if offering the degree does not have an adverse effect on the universities' J.D. program.42 The ABA provides acquiescence to the law school if the requirements are met. However, Law schools cannot claim that their LL.M. program has been approved by the ABA.43
Generally, states lack regulatory power over LL.M. programs. Nonetheless, they establish bar admission requirements. States such as California, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and recently Florida admit foreign legal graduates to legal practice. Other states do not grant LL.M. graduates bar admission. Hence, states establish bar admission criteria that directly impact LL.M. graduates. The states might specify the number of credits international students must take to qualify for bar admission. Additionally, they might require specific courses. Therefore, states indirectly regulate L.L.M. degrees by establishing requirements that graduates must meet if they want to be eligible for bar admission.
I use New York as an example to show how bar admissions for foreign graduate students work. "Section 520.6 of the Rules of the Court of Appeals for the Admission of Attorneys and Counselors at Law (22 NYCRR 520.6) contains the eligibility requirements for applicants who wish to qualify for the New York State bar examination based on the study of law in a foreign country."44
In the case of Colombian legal graduates, they must meet the four requirements of section 520.6 (b)(1). First, a qualifying degree in law allows them to practice in a country other than the U.S. Second, the degree must come from an accredited law school in a foreign country. Third, the program of study must be substantially equivalent in duration to those approved by the ABA in the U.S. Finally, the program must be based on the principles of Common Law and equivalent to the legal education provided by ABA-approved law schools.45
Given that LL.M. graduates have not studied in the U.S., they can cure their degree. (Rule 520.6 [b] [1] [ii] and 20.6 [b] [2])46Curing means that if their legal education was not substantially equivalent or sufficient in duration to ABA-approved law programs in the U.S., graduates can cure one of the deficiencies, but not both, by graduating from an LL.M. program.47 In the case of Colombians, they will have to cure the substantial equivalence deficiency by obtaining an LL.M. degree.
There are two different rules regarding curation (one applies to students who graduate from LL.M. programs before 2013, and the other to those who graduate after that date). Given the timeframe of this paper, I will focus on the new rule. New York State establishes that a foreign legal graduate can cure both deficiencies by obtaining an LL.M. degree at an ABA-approved law school. The foreign legal graduate must obtain the LL.M. degree within 24 months of enrollment.48
Furthermore, the students must take at least 24 classroom semester hours of credits. If the graduate student does not meet the minimum requirements, New York allows them to take the additional credits on a non-degree basis at an ABA-approved law school. Additionally, the LL.M. program must take place over at least two semesters and cannot be completed exclusively in the summer. Only ABA-approved law schools can offer LL.M. degrees (therefore, analyzing the ABA's regulatory framework is relevant).49
The New York Board of Law Examiners also establishes coursework requirements for bar admissions. Foreign legal graduates must take two semesters of professional responsibility, two credits in legal research, writing, and analysis, two credits on American legal studies or a similar course that introduces U.S. law, and six credits in subjects that will be evaluated in the New York Bar (e.g., criminal law, civil procedure, evidence, among other courses).50
In conclusion, even though LL.M.s are unregulated by the ABA, state requirements for bar admission impact LL.M. programs. These regulations can establish a specific number of credits, required courses, and other criteria that foreign legal graduates must meet during their program. LL.M. programs allow students to choose whether they want to pursue bar admission in a state that will enable international students to practice and provide the necessary course work. Ultimately, the decision rests with the foreign legal graduate.
Application Requirements: The LL.M. Rules of the Game
Even though selection criteria vary, the following requirements are common to all LL.M. programs. First, all universities require applicants to have a law degree. Additionally, applicants must submit a form to provide general information about themselves. Some universities require this form to be submitted directly, while others rely on an online system provided by LSAC to make the process efficient and manageable.51
Applicants from non-English speaking countries, who did not receive their legal education in English, must provide evidence of English proficiency. Usually, this is done by presenting the valid scores of an English proficiency test -such as the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)- taken within two years before submitting their application.52 The minimum score required by most top-tiered universities is one hundred, with a minimum score of 25 in each subsection.
Additionally, they must submit their C/V and a personal statement, which may have additional requirements depending on the institution.53 The applicant must include their law degree transcripts and transcripts from other programs they may have completed after their law degree. They must provide at least two letters of recommendation from faculty members of their university and a professional recommendation. Finally, once a university admits a candidate to their program, some universities require students to request financial aid.54
After applicants submit all the required documents, they must wait for a couple of months for the admissions decisions. We do not know how the process works internally. However, some law schools state their admission criteria and the academic accomplishments they seek in their applicants. I will focus on the LL.M. programs offered by three high-ranked institutions.
Yale Law School (YLS) states that "[a]pplicants to the LL.M. program must have a strong record of academic accomplishment. Additionally, some professional or law teaching experience following the completion of the first professional degree is encouraged"55, and "admission is generally available only to individuals planning careers in law teaching and scholarship."56 In other words, YLS initially limits its admission to legal graduates who are pursuing an academic career. These requirements may discourage prospective applicants because it is difficult to have prior teaching experience in their home countries.
Harvard Law School (HLS) attracts "intellectually curious and thoughtful candidates"57 who come from various legal systems and backgrounds and may have different career plans. According to Harvard's admissions page, they "believe that an adequate comparison of personal qualities and professional accomplishments is not possible on the basis of brief personal interviews."58 Hence, it seems the university's decision is made by comparing the information provided by the applicants, such as the TOEFL exam, their CV, and their letters of recommendation.
Stanford Law School (SLS) offers two programs, the LL.M. and the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies (SPILS). Stanford considers both programs master's degrees. However, the SPILS program is designed for "international candidates with a law degree earned outside the United States who are committed to pursuing careers in teaching, research, the judiciary, public policy, or service in government or non-governmental organizations."59 To apply for the SPILS programs, candidates must also submit a research proposal. The program only takes twelve candidates per year, and it is the pathway for pursuing the doctoral program in law. The LL.M. program has four specializations, and the admission process is separate from the SPILS program.
Costs and Scholarships
Cost of Admissions
The cost of tuition for a one-year LL.M. program in a top-tier school is around $65,000 U.S. dollars for nine months.60 Furthermore, a graduate student's total budget for an LL.M. program is approximately USD 100,000 (this may vary). For a Colombian interested in completing her LL.M. studies in an American top-tier law school, the total investment she would have to undertake would be around 400 million Colombian pesos (without any scholarships or grants).61 The additional costs of the program are other expenses such as housing and living.
The Costs of Admission (C.O.A.) for some LL.M. programs for the 2020-2021 academic year in tier 1 universities were: 62 Harvard Law School $65,875;63 Yale Law School $65,792;64 Stanford Law School $64,350;65 The University of Chicago Law School $68,652;66 Columbia University Law School $72,352;67 Berkeley Law $66,530 (for their traditional and thesis track LL.M.'s);68 Cornell Law School $70,188;69 New York University Law School $68,348;70 University of Pennsylvania Law School $70,880 (including their summer program);71 University of California Los Angeles $64,046;72 Georgetown $69,050 (full time);73 and the University of Michigan Law School $68,160.74
In contrast, the C.O.A. of some non-top-tiered institutions are: University of Wisconsin-Madison $46,400;75 George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School $40,740;76 The University of Utah, S.J Quinney College of Law $45,000 (Master in Legal Studies for non-residents);77 University of Colorado-Boulder $34,008;78 Arizona State University, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law $49,038 (for non-residents);79 the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law $27,625;80 University of Connecticut $29,160 (LL.M. in U.S Legal Studies);81 Cardozo Law School $63,900;82 the University of Miami $55,936;83 the University of Cincinnati $29,010 (for non-residents);84 Stetson Law School $48,54285 (which offers specialized LL.M.s in advocacy86, elder law87, and international law);88 Florida International University $20,18089; Saint Thomas College of Law $28,752 (Offers a human rights LL.M)90; and NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, which charges $1,501 per credit. 91
Using the U.S. News rankings as a reference, we evidence that LL.M. tuitions from top-tiered universities tend to be higher than low-ranked universities. Except for Cardozo and Miami, the costs of an LL.M. in a low-ranked university tend to be lower than $50,000. In contrast, LL.M.'s in top-tiered universities cost over $65,000 (except for Stanford).
In addition to the C.O.A., other fees and expenses are associated with the LL.M. degrees, such as university fees, books, housing, living expenses, and health insurance. Not all universities make public the same information about additional costs. Some universities provide more information than others (i.e., Berkeley estimates groceries whereas N.Y.U. does not). For example, the estimated cost of other expenses for 2020-2021 at Harvard was $34,541, $26,306 at Yale, $26,306 at Cornell, $32,068 at Columbia,92 $35,774 at N.Y.U., and $21,156 at UConn.
I will now provide the total cost of an LL.M. program in the universities I described above. I will organize the universities from the most to least expensive. The values provided in the Table 1 are estimates based on the information provided by the law schools. The costs may vary in each case. Moreover, some universities offer more information than others regarding other expenses. The table's organization will be different if we compare the cost of living in a big city like New York or Chicago to college towns like Ithaca or Ann Arbor.
Table 1 Estimated cost of LL.M. programs in different U.S. universities
| University | Tuition | Other expenses | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stanford | $64,350 | Above $35,00 093 | $105,84994 |
| Columbia | $72,352 | $32,068 | $104,420 |
| NYU | $68,348 | $35,774 | $104,113 |
| Harvard Law School | $65,875 | $34,541 | $100,416 |
| Berkeley Law | $66,530 | $33,139 | $99,669 |
| Georgetown | $69,050 | $30,428 | $99,478 |
| University of Pennsylvania | $70,880 | $28,040 | $98,920 |
| Cornell Law School | $70,188 | $32,068 | $96,560 |
| Cardozo Law School | $63,900 | $29,189 | $93,089 |
| University of Chicago | $68,652 | NA95 | $93,00096 |
| Yale Law School | $65,792 | $26,306 | $92,098 |
| University of Michigan | $68,160 | $23,400 | $91,560 |
| University of California, Los Angeles | $68,74297 | $20,00098 | $88,742 |
| University of Miami | $55,936 | $29,264 | $85,200 |
| Arizona State University, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law | $49,038 | $22,714 | $71,752 |
| Stetson Law School | $48,542 | 22,050 | $70,592 |
| George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School | $40,740 | $27,246 | $67,986 |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison | $46,400 | $19,051 | $65,451 |
| University of Colorado-Boulder | $34,008 | $24,115.44 | $58,123.44 |
| University of Connecticut | $29,160 | $20,856 | $50,016 |
| University of Cincinnati | $29,010 | $20,428 | $49,438 |
| University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law | $27,625 | $19,808 | $47,433 |
| Florida International University | $20,180 | $26,626 | $46,806 |
| The University of Utah, S.J Quinney College of Law | $45,000 | NA | $45,000 |
Scholarships and Grants
As the previous data suggests, LL.M. programs are expensive, and not all applicants can afford them. Hence, universities usually offer scholarships or financial aid to help students finance their degrees. These scholarships can serve as incentives to attract candidates with different forms of capital -social, cultural, economic, professional, and symbolic. In other words, I believe financial aid is not only a mechanism that serves the manifest function of helping candidates finance their LL.M. degrees; it can also serve as a bargaining mechanism for universities to attract students. If the university offers the candidate a good scholarship, the probability of a candidate accepting their admissions offer will be higher. However, LL.M. candidates consider not only economic factors, but also the symbolic, social, and professional capital the university can provide.
Universities, in general, offer two forms of financial aid or scholarships. Once the applicant expresses her wish to be considered for financial assistance, universities can provide merit-based or need-based scholarships.99 Universities assign merit-based scholarships to candidates with academic and professional achievements. 100 However, each university is at liberty to define merit. In that sense, merit could mean the applicant's prior academic, professional, and individual experiences and how they advance the institution's values.101
Additionally, universities offer need-based scholarships to those applicants who provide a financial aid form indicating their personal and family income and other economic information. When scholarships are need-based, universities tend to combine scholarships with loans. However, there are cases where the universities provide full tuition and cover part of the living expenses.102
Assessing the effects
Scholarships and Grants
Given the costs associated with obtaining an LL.M. degree, I want to analyze scholarships and grants. To do this, I use Colombia's Colfuturo loan program because of its importance for Colombian graduates pursuing postgraduate education abroad. This section relies on Colfuturo's public quantitative information to analyze the possible effects of LL.M. selection criteria.
Colfuturo's loan program is "an economic support initiative for Colombian professionals, with academic excellence, who wish to broaden their professional career with master's or doctorate studies at the best universities abroad."103 The program receives financial resources from the Ministry of Science and private corporations.104 Its primary purpose is to "encourage the return of talent trained abroad to work in the regions, academia, and the public sector."105 The program does not offer full scholarships. It works both as loan and scholarship because if the beneficiaries fulfill certain requirements,106 they can receive a scholarship of up to 80% of the loan.
The process for obtaining a Colfuturo loan is highly competitive and meritocratic. Successful grant applications must meet the following requirements: first, all students must be bilingual, regardless of whether the program they are applying to is taught in Spanish.107 Second, all students must submit their undergraduate G.P.A. score, worth 42% of the application.108 Third, you must select the university where you intend to conduct your LL.M. program. The university where you will obtain your degree is worth 38% of the application.109 Colfuturo assigns a numeric value to110 the institution and the program based on rankings such as QS111 Times Higher Education,112 and Shanghai Ranking. 113- 114
Fourth, you submit your undergraduate class ranking. If the ranking is higher than your G.P.A. (for example, your classmates obtained lower grades than you did), this is worth 15% of the application. If your G.P.A. is better, Colfuturo redistributes this percentage between all the prior selection criteria. The final requirement is an essay explaining why you are applying to the specific study program, worth 5% of the application.
Colfuturo115 awarded 143 scholarships to lawyers116 in 2018 and financed 112 LL.M. programs117. In 2019, 118 128 lawyers were selected for the scholarship, and ninety-three intended to pursue the Master of Laws program. Colfuturo stratifies the data using the Colombian Government's social class measurement. 119 Between 2014 and 2019, Colfuturo selected 689 lawyers to pursue graduate education, and 642 pursued a master's program. Around 63% percent of the lawyers chosen came from the two highest social classes (five and six), 120 and 37% were middle and lower class; 57.85% were women; only one person pertained to Indigenous Peoples, and five were afro descendants (this is the term used by Colfuturo).121
A high percentage of the beneficiaries come from top-tiered Universities in Bogota. According to several rankings, 122 the top four private law schools in Colombia are Universidad de Los Andes, Universidad Javeriana, Universidad Externado de Colombia, and Universidad del Rosario, whereas the most important public institution is Universidad Nacional de Colombia. All these universities are in Bogota, Colombia's financial and political capital.
As stated above, Colfuturo selected 93 lawyers to pursue LL.M. programs in 2019. 123 Of these, 11 (11.82%) graduated from Universidad Javeriana Bogota, 34 (36.55%) from Universidad de Los Andes, 21 (22.58%) from Universidad del Rosario, six (6.45%) from Universidad Externado, five (5.37%) from EAFIT Medellin, four (4.30%) from Universidad Nacional, and 12 graduated from other 11 law schools. Thus, 77.4% of the scholarships offered by Colfuturo went to the top four universities in Colombia, all of which are in Bogota. Also, Los Andes, Javeriana, and Rosario accounted for almost 71% of the students. In contrast, other law schools accounted for 29% of the Colfuturo scholarship.
As an example of the symbolic and academic advantages of graduating from a top-tiered university, in a recent newspaper article journalists asked ten Colombian law firms about the best law schools in the country. Seven of them mentioned Universidad Externado, six Universidad de Los Andes and Universidad Javeriana, five Universidad del Rosario, and two Universidad Nacional. Only one firm mentioned two universities that were not in Bogota.124
While Colfuturo's data is a reliable source of information, it has several shortcomings. First, this analysis is only applicable to LL.M. programs. Colfuturo financed a total of 1,368 graduate students in different fields in 2019.125 Colfuturo awarded 57% of the loans to middle-class students, whereas 36.6% of the scholarships financed students from the top two social classes. Second, not all the selected candidates accept the scholarship.126 Also, some beneficiaries might have chosen a different university than the one stated on Colfuturo's website. Additionally, the data set does not account for people that choose other means to finance their LL.M. studies. Furthermore, we do not have the total number of applicants for LL.M. programs.
Another important conclusion we can reach from the data is that few upper-class lawyers can finance their master's education. Thus, regardless of class, graduates usually seek other sources of funding. The economic reality of Colombia might explain this problem. For example, the Statistics National Administrative Department (DANE) considers that a person is poor if their income is below COP 211,807 (around 90 U.S. dollars). However, scholars, public institutions, and the media have studied hidden poverty in cities such as Bogota.127 Hidden poverty refers to middle- and upper-class people who cannot provide for their expenses due to sustained unemployment.128
English Proficiency, G.P.A. Scores and Class Rank, Professional Experience, and Letters of Recommendation
The English Proficiency Requirement
The first barrier that applicants must overcome is English proficiency. Universities set the minimum TOEFL score at 90 points and a minimum of twenty-five points in each section (writing, speaking, listening, and reading). While this seems meritocratic, Colombia's education system has one of the worst English levels in Latin America129 and globally.130 Hence, if you cannot afford a private school that teaches multiple languages, it will be difficult to learn English and obtain the required scores for a master's program. Moreover, even if you can achieve the minimum score, people with access to better education, such as private schools or private exchange programs, can attain higher scores.
Additionally, several grants, such as Colfuturo's, require proficiency in a second language. This requirement makes sense if the graduates pursue their master's degree in a different language. Nonetheless, this is needed even when the master's degree is in Spanish. Hence, the English proficiency requirement limits the application only to those students who can provide proof thereof. I note that the condition is flexible, and applicants can provide evidence of the second language up to two years after they were awarded the loan.
The English proficiency requirement creates issues in the admission process. English becomes the first barrier to LL.M. programs. The number of lawyers who consider applying to the program is limited. This particularly affects those who cannot afford bilingual education. They might look for other alternatives, such as exchange programs or free online options. However, this leads to the second issue: middle- and lower-class applicants compete against upper-middle- and upper-class students from Colombia and with students worldwide, using the TOEFL scores as a measure. The higher the law school is ranked, the higher the TOEFL score they require. While in theory this seems 'meritocratic', in practice this criterion unintentionally favors upper- and upper-middle-class lawyers that afforded private schools or had access to bilingual education, because they have a higher probability of obtaining better scores.
The English proficiency requirement cannot be eliminated because the program will be taught in English. However, universities could be flexible with their TOEFL requirements and provide English courses for students with lower scores during the summer. They could also offer tuition waivers for low-income students and free English courses during the summer before beginning their LL.M. They could also accept students with low TOEFL scores, and law schools could assign language tutors for them during the program. These measures can benefit low-income students and help them achieve their professional goals.
The G.P.A. Score and Class Rank
The second barrier is the G.P.A. scores and class rank. G.P.A. scores and the class rank are vital for the application process, both for grants and U.S. universities. Nonetheless, scholars have conducted few empirical studies in Colombia to determine if top-tiered universities give their alumni higher grades and if some institutions provide better scores than others (e.g., University X assigns higher grades than University Y).131 This relates to the phenomenon of grade inflation.132 Further research should be conducted in this area.
Even though there is no data available to analyze this issue, the system would be dysfunctional if there is grade inflation. Students with higher G.P.A.'s will have higher chances of being admitted by a tier 1 law school and obtaining merit-based grants. The same is true for the class rank, determined by the GPA. However, this grade would not be representative of the student's merit. Instead, other factors would come into play that the student does not control.
Additionally, if grades represent merit, Guinier's critique of meritocracy comes into play. Guinier argued that our current definition of merit is problematic. She defined merit as a 'testocracy'133, which means that a student internalizes their success, takes personal credit for it, and ignores the "educational resources and networks of his college-educated parents. He has learned that individual achievement trumps collective commitment. Those who reach the finish line faster will reap their rewards here on earth."134
This concept of meritocracy assumes that grades and test scores evidence the applicants' worth and probability of success in the program. Additionally, this idea leads us to ignore the applicant's environment: "the built-in biases that privilege those who are already advantaged."135 Hence, society signals that it values competition by defining merit through grades and test scores.136
Guinier believed there was an alternative to the current definition of merit. She argued that we should abandon testocracy and its focus on grades and test scores. Instead, we should adopt democratic merit. Democratic merit means that their contribution to democracy measures a student's potential. This contribution is calculated by leadership, collaboration with others, resiliency, drive to learn, and so on.137
A further discussion on Guinier's understanding of merit is beyond the scope of the paper. However, we must take her invitation to discuss the current definition of merit and our focus on G.P.A. and class rank as "objective" bases to determine an LL.M. applicant's probability of success in the program.
Professional Experience (C/V)
The third barrier is professional experience. Markovits has shown that elites monopolize income, wealth, power, industry, public honor, and private esteem138. The best job offerings -whether public or private- are given to elite lawyers. An important example of this is the hiring practices of law firms.
I analyzed the law schools attended by partners of three top Colombian law firms. I categorized the firms using the 2018 incomes reported by the firms as appeared in Colombian business magazine Dinero.139 Then, I cross-referenced the information with the one provided by Legal 500, Latin Lawyer 250, and Chambers & Partners. I selected the three top law firms as a case study.140 After choosing the firms, I reviewed 18 curriculums from partners at these three law firms.141 From each firm, I randomly selected three male and three female partners. The data showed that 44.4% of these partners obtained their law degrees from Universidad Javeriana and 27% from Universidad de Los Andes. The rest studied in different universities such as Universidad del Rosario, Sergio Arboleda, Universidad de la Sabana, among others.
Furthermore, 94.4% of the partners attended law school in Bogota, 88.8% had LL.M. degrees, 55% from U.S. law schools, in universities such as Harvard (1), Columbia (2), University of Chicago (1), Georgetown (2), Boston College (1), and Northwestern (1). The data supplied here is not quantitatively conclusive, given the sample size. For qualitative purposes, however, it shows that randomly selected partners at top law firms tend to graduate from the top law schools in Colombia located in Bogota and pursue LL.M. degrees in tier one universities in the U.S. Hence, graduates from top-tiered universities with LL.M. degrees have high chances of becoming partners at big law firms.
Letters of Recommendation
The previous problem is not exclusive to law firms. It also applies to academic positions, because the probability of being hired as a professor by a university increases if you obtain an LL.M. from a top-tiered institution. Suppose a Colombian university employs professors with LL.M degrees from top-tiered institutions. In that case, this can increase the probability of admission of their students to tier-one LL.M. programs because the students can provide a letter of recommendation (LOR) from a professor who attended those institutions.
U.S. universities require that applicants provide LOR from faculty members of the university the student graduated from, and they can submit an additional one regarding their prior work experience. The chances of getting a letter from a professor who graduated from an LL.M. program at a U.S. university increase if you attend a top institution because of the university's social networks and social capital.
For example, Universidad de Los Andes has one of the highest-ranked Colombian law schools. Thus, I studied how many tenured professors at that University have LL.M. degrees from the U.S. and from top-tiered institutions. This sample is small, and I do not draw quantitative conclusions from it. Nonetheless, it still provides valuable information. It would be interesting for further studies to conduct a comparative analysis among different Colombian law schools. According to their website, Los Andes142 had 25 tenured professors in 2020 (65%); 12 held LL.M. degrees from U.S. institutions (31.5%).143 10 studied at top-tiered universities: were three (7,8%) Yale Law School LL.M. and J.S.D graduates, and seven (18%) Harvard Law School. LL.M. and S.J.D graduates. 144 This information does not include other adjunct faculty or visiting professors. The number of graduates from tier 1 U.S. institutions may be higher if the data set includes non-tenured professors.
Legal graduates from top-tiered institutions -such as Universidad Javeriana, Los Andes, Externado, and Rosario- have a higher chance of getting letters of recommendation that tier 1 U.S. institutions value, because these graduates will have higher chances of collaborating with professors with higher social, symbolic, and educational capital. This criterion can impact the selection process of LL.M. boards and might unintentionally favor graduates from top-tiered Colombian institutions.
One way to solve this issue could be blind LORs. Hence, the person providing the letter and their professional and academic experience would remain unknown to the selection committee. This measure would help center the analysis on the content of the letter. Additionally, since universities have strict policies on who writes the recommendations and how they are submitted, this system would remain in place. All that would be required is that, during the process, the admissions office eliminates the recommender's data from the letter.
Recognition of the LL.M. Degree
The final requirement I analyze is the recognition procedure conducted by the Colombian Secretary of Education. Generally, Colombian legal graduates who pursue degrees in a foreign country must have their degree recognized by the Secretary of Education. The process is regulated by Resolution No. 10687 of October 9, 2019. Those degree holders interested in the recognition of the degree must meet all the criteria outlined in the Resolution.
I filed a right of petition to the Secretary of Education to inquire about the total Master of Laws degrees the Secretary had recognized between 2015 and 2019.145 According to the Secretary, there were 1,012 requests. However, only ten requests corresponded to master's degrees in the U.S. The U.S. universities represented in the file were the University of Pennsylvania, New York University (3), the University of California (it is not clear which one), St John's University, American Andragogy University, California Western School of Law, University of Washington, and University of Houston. Interestingly, apart from NYU, no other tier 1 university degrees were recognized.
Does this mean that the Secretary will not recognize an LL.M. from Harvard or Stanford? Or that no Colombian legal graduates attended tier-one universities during the period? Not necessarily. It can be noted, comparing these numbers with those of Colfuturo, for example, that the number of degrees recognized does not correspond to the number of people who have obtained LL.M. degrees in the U.S. during the period under study. Various factors could explain this.
First, the Secretary of Education's administrative process can be time-consuming and expensive. The recognition criteria are difficult to meet (e.g., the degree must be notarized in the state where the law school is located). Furthermore, many graduate students are unaware of how the process works. Second, the recognition of the degree is not mandatory in all cases. Rather, the recognition is usually required to work in public institutions and universities146. Hence, LL.M. graduates will only proceed to validate their foreign degree when their employer requires it.
Finally, and related to the previous factor, many LL.M. graduates will neither pursue academic nor public careers. For example, NYU's career services note that "The vast majority of graduates, in all specialties, work in private practice at law firms. Increasingly, students are exploring a wider range of opportunities including public accounting, investment banking, and in-house opportunities at corporations."147 If this is the case, law firms and corporations do not require the recognition of the degree to hire LL.M. graduates. They only need them to have obtained the degree. Further studies should be conducted on the experience of Colombian legal graduates when returning to the country to work with law firms.
Conclusions
LL.M. degrees have become extremely important for Colombian legal graduates. The degree will provide different professional opportunities at the national and transnational levels. However, the selection criteria established by U.S. law schools produce negative effects, benefiting upper-middle- and upper-class legal graduates.
First, this paper described the selection criteria established by LL.M. programs (the game's rules). This description included the different elements of the application procedure. Then, the paper detailed the costs of an LL.M. program and the scholarship selection mechanisms set by universities.
In the second part of the paper, I showed how the selection criteria reproduce social hierarchies in the legal field by, first, studying how they impact the Colfuturo loan program and, second, by showing the effect of four of the selection criteria: the English proficiency requirements, the letters of recommendation, the professional experience, the G.P.A. scores and class rank, and the recognition of the degree.
This paper concludes that LL.M. degrees currently reproduce social hierarchies in the Colombian legal field. During the period under study, the selection criteria set by LL.M. programs favor upper-middle- and upper-class legal graduates pursuing the degree.148 Additionally, that the number of upper-middle- and upper-class legal graduates receiving the Colfuturo loan was higher than that of middle and lower classes. As the paper showed, the selection mechanism of LL.M. directly impacts the results of the Colfuturo loan program. However, it should be noted that there can be periods when the number of middle-class students exceeds high-class students because grants and loans facilitate access to legal education, and overall democratization of the programs occurs.
Nonetheless, access to LL.M. programs cannot be taken as proof that the degrees necessarily serve as a mechanism to contest the social hierarchy. The degrees can advance social mobility for low- and middle-class lawyers and serve as a mechanism to transform social hierarchies. Nonetheless, middle- and lower-class LL.M. graduates might have no interest in changing the social hierarchy and only use LL.M. degrees for the former purpose. Alternatively, there could be middle- and upper-class students who actively use their degrees to challenge the existing hierarchy.
Hence, LL.M. degrees can reproduce social hierarchies, but this is not a necessary condition of the degree. Actors in the field can use the degree for different -and sometimes contradictory- purposes. Therefore, we must study different periods and see what effects these types of degrees produce and the actors who participate in the process.
Additionally, it is worth exploring if the current Colombian political context and the social discussions of inequality (the social mobilizations in 2019, 2020, and 2021) can lead to a period were a group of LL.M. graduates (and graduates in other fields), irrespective of their class, will use their acquired academic capital to advance -or continue to prevent- social change in the legal and other social fields.
Furthermore, this paper leaves the door open for further quantitative and qualitative analyses on graduate legal education. A qualitative study of Colombian legal graduates would allow us to understand further why they are pursuing graduate education, their career paths, etc. These studies can also shed light on how LL.M. students transplant legal institutions from the U.S. and transform legal education. Scholars can also explore how the transplant of legal institutions produces new ideologies about the proper role of the lawyer, the relation of the legal profession to the broader political and economic fields, and how LL.M. graduates are transforming the Colombian state and economy.
Finally, even though I mentioned some measures that could be taken to minimize the effects described in the paper, I hope that this analysis sparks a conversation on this subject. Rather than contributing to the dominant discourse on legal education and LL.M. degrees, or to give the impression that simple changes or reforms suffice, I hope this paper has shown its contradictory nature: LL.M. degrees might have the potential to offset legal hierarchies and societal change, but also to limit social transformations and reproduce the hierarchies of the social system. I also hope this paper provokes further discussions on graduate legal education in the selection mechanisms of graduate schools more broadly, and meritocracy.
