How to Successfully Apply to Harvard's LL.M. Program: The Definitive Guide

Understanding the Admissions Process for a Harvard LL.M.

General Considerations

The success of your application for the Harvard LL.M. program is influenced by a variety of factors. These include your background, the quality of your application materials, and the overall pool of applicants in a given year. While your background and the applicant pool are outside of your control, the quality of your application is something you can directly influence — and that’s where I’ll focus my advice.

I often receive messages asking me to "predict someone’s chances" of admission. I call this type of inquiry "application astrology." Unless there are clear and measurable flaws in your profile, such as a very low GPA or insufficient English proficiency, it’s impossible to assess someone’s chances with any certainty.

The full list of Harvard LL.M. application components includes:

• Online application form
• Personal statement
• CV or Résumé
• Transcripts & Diplomas
• Recommendation
• Application fee of US$85
• LSAC Report (if applicable)
• Official TOEFL report (if applicable)
• Financial aid application (if applicable)

As you can see, the application is largely qualitative. Quantitative tests such as LSAT or GRE are not required. Qualitative components, on the other hand, play a significant role. There’s the essay on a legal topic (Part A) and the essay about your background and motivations for pursuing an LL.M. at Harvard (Part B). Together, these form what Harvard refers to as the "personal statement." Additionally, the application requires two+ letters of recommendation, each of which contributes to the overall narrative.

Among these components, writing plays a particularly crucial role. I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth repeating: strong writing can have a major impact on your admission chances. In fact, writing is significantly more important than any individual line on your CV.

As both an admissions consultant and a former member of an admissions committee, I’ve seen this dynamic play out many times. Poor writing has the potential to undermine even an impressive CV, while strong writing can elevate an otherwise average application. While good writing can’t fix every weakness, bad writing can certainly harm a strong profile. Conversely, a stellar CV won’t compensate for poorly executed essays.

How the Harvard LL.M. Evaluation Process Works

Your application will be assessed not against the entire pool of applicants but rather alongside those of candidates who hold a first law degree from your country (which can differ from nationality).

For example, I had an Iranian classmate who also studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University, graduating a few years before me. When I asked the Harvard Graduate Program whether she was evaluated with other Iranian applicants or with candidates with a first law degree from Russia, they confirmed that she was assessed in the latter category.

How Much Professional Experience Do You Need to Have?

Unlike some other schools, such as Columbia, Harvard Law School does not have a preference for applicants who have completed at least two years of professional experience. The only exception is for American applicants — they are encouraged to have at least two years of post-J.D. work experience.

In general, Harvard aims to ensure diversity within the LL.M. class, including diversity in age and career stage. You will find a mix of students: some coming straight from their first law degree, others with a few years of experience, and some more seasoned professionals.

While the decision on when to apply for an LL.M. is entirely up to you, it's worth considering what you hope to gain from it. If your primary goal is to earn a prestigious degree abroad and return to your home country, applying straight after your first law degree can be a good option. However, if your goal is to build a career abroad, it may be more challenging without prior work experience.

In my observation, those who were able to leverage the LL.M. most effectively for their professional growth were people who already had some work experience. That said, I want to emphasize that success is highly individual — I have seen applicants from both categories thrive.

Planning Your Harvard LL.M. Application Timeline

Successful applications aren’t written in a hurry. To craft a high-quality application for the Harvard LL.M. program, you’ll need to start preparing well in advance.

How far ahead you need to begin depends on your circumstances. Factors such as your prior experience applying to competitive programs and whether you need to improve your English proficiency will influence your timeline.

In general, I recommend starting your preparation at least six months to a year before the LL.M. application deadline. This allows you ample time to reflect on your experiences, refine your essays, and ensure every component of your application is as strong as it can be.

Eligibility Requirements for Harvard's lL.M. Program

First Law Degree

Eligibility refers to the entry threshold — what requirements you need to meet for your application not to be disqualified on purely formal grounds.

Strictly speaking, according to Harvard’s LL.M. application instructions, there is only one official eligibility requirement: you must hold a first law degree.

It is also specified that applicants who hold or are pursuing an LL.M. degree from another U.S. law school are rarely accepted. However, I don’t know how rigidly Harvard Law School enforces this guideline or what factors they take into account — for example, whether the ranking of the law school matters.

A common reason for pursuing a second LL.M. is that the first was from a less prestigious institution, and obtaining an LL.M. from a place like Harvard will provide better professional opportunities. I had a classmate from Afghanistan who completed her first LL.M. at Fowler School of Law, Chapman University, and then went on to Harvard. This confirms that Harvard does admit applicants who already hold an LL.M. from another U.S. law school.

Ultimately, I believe admission depends on the strength of your overall profile and motivation. If you can clearly demonstrate your value to the Harvard's LL.M. program and justify why you need a second LL.M. degree from a U.S. school, it may improve your chances of acceptance.

The "Intent to Return" Clause

For non-U.S. applicants, the Harvard LL.M. instructions state that the program is designed for candidates who have "demonstrated intent to return to their country."

This is not an eligibility requirement. In other words, if you do not explicitly prove your intent to return to your home country, your application will not be disqualified or disadvantaged.

Personally, I did not structure my personal statement around an intention to return to my home jurisdiction, nor did I see many other applicants do so. My hypothesis is that Harvard includes this statement — and phrases it this way, as "the program is designed for" rather than "the program is only open to" — because there are objectively fewer career support resources available for LL.M. candidates compared to J.D. students.

This has improved in recent years, and I know plenty of people, including myself, who have found jobs after Harvard's LL.M. However, I think Harvard includes this clause as a safeguard. If an LL.M. graduate later struggles to find a job due to nationality or visa issues and complains about a lack of career opportunities, Harvard can point to this clause and say, “Well, our program is designed for people who were not aiming to build a career in the U.S. in the first place.”

What This Means for You

This should not discourage you. Doing an LL.M. at Harvard will significantly expand your pool of opportunities compared to what you had before. Exactly how many and what type of opportunities you will have access to depends on a variety of factors, some of which are tied to your identity and unchangeable, while others depend on your actions, including what steps you take to secure a job.

The key thing to understand is that an LL.M. at Harvard is a platform for building your career, not a guarantee. Success will not happen automatically — you'll need to be proactive in tipping the odds in your favor.

The good news is that attitudes toward LL.M. programs in the U.S. have been shifting over the past years. I recently spoke with Joshua Alter, former Dean of Admissions at Northwestern University, whose project Beyond Non-JD is actively working to improve career outcomes for LL.M. graduates.

Another good news is that by doing your LL.M. at Harvard you will become part of an incredibly diverse and global community of professionals. Career-building, like many things in life, is a team sport, and your success will largely depend on how effectively you leverage your connections.

Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement Part A

According to the instructions, one of the key components of Harvard's LL.M. application is a personal statement of under 1,500 words that consists of two parts. In Part A, you are asked to "describe an important issue in your field of interest or a current legal problem ... and then propose and analyze a theoretical framework or legal strategy to address this issue." I created an extensive guide to how to approach it here. In Part B, you are asked to tell something about yourself.

Let’s get this out of the way: Harvard’s naming system is incredibly confusing. What they are actually asking you to do is submit two very different essays. One is what everyone knows as a personal statement — i.e., an essay about yourself — and the other is an essay on a legal topic, aka writing sample.

No one in their right mind would call the latter a "personal statement" for one simple reason: It’s not. It’s really not.

I don’t know why they make it difficult for everyone. Each year, I get multiple questions from confused applicants who are afraid to pick the topic they like for Part A because they think that if it doesn’t align with Part B, they’ll be at a disadvantage.

My hypothesis is that they call it a personal statement for the sake of convenience, to unite the written parts of the application under a common umbrella and simplify the reference.

What's important to understand, Part A is not testing your motivation to pursue an LL.M. at Harvard. For Part A, your task is exhausted by the prompt: describe an important issue or a legal problem, and then propose and analyze a theoretical framework or legal strategy.

Part A tests your analytical, reasoning, and writing skills.

It may sound strange, but in my experience as a member of the admissions committee, I’ve found that essays on a legal issue are often more helpful in differentiating between strong and weak candidates than their personal writing.

Why?

The way someone writes a personal statement can often be influenced by factors other than merit. For instance, an applicant may have been previously exposed to this culture of writing (writing personal statements is more common in the U.S. and the UK than in other parts of the world). They may be influenced by gender socialization — women are societally conditioned to downplay their accomplishments and thus find it harder to produce a convincing narrative about themselves.

Writing on a legal topic, however, is something every single lawyer has to do. Writing about law is generally what most lawyers do most of the time. This means that this type of essay creates a better (thought still imperfect) level playing field than the personal statement does. It tells the admissions committee more about the candidate's expression and analytical skills.

If I see a personal statement that is maybe not the strongest but okay, I can still give the applicant the benefit of the doubt. However, if I see a weak essay on a legal topic, I am more likely to conclude that the applicant is a weak lawyer.

If you'd like to learn how to write Part A of Harvard's LL.M. personal statement, please see my guide here, Part 1 and Part 2. I also suggest reading my article on the most common mistakes people make in Oxford's written work, which is functionally very similar to the HLS's personal statement Part A.

Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement Part B

Under the application instructions, you’ll need to submit an essay titled Part B of the HLS LLM personal statement. This essay must answer the following prompt:

“Please tell us something about yourself — in particular, why you wish to pursue an LL.M. degree at Harvard and how doing so connects with what you have done in the past and what you plan to do in the future.”

I’ve written extensively on how to write Part B of the HLS LL.M. personal statement before; you are welcome to read articles here (How I Found Ideas for My HLS Personal Statement) and here (How to Choose the Perfect Topic for a Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement: Expert Roadmap, With Examples).

In this guide, I’ll focus on the part that most applicants seem to struggle with the most – explaining your ‘why LLM.’ The good news is that if you’re applying to a school like Harvard, you are not expected to justify your choice as much. It is presumed that if you’re applying to Harvard, well, that’s because it’s Harvard. To quote the Harvard Law School admissions office itself:

"Should you mention you want to come to HLS? We already assume that if you’re applying."

A more specific argument, however, is expected when you’re applying to a program that's either less highly ranked or more specialized - keep that in mind for your other LL.M. applications.

That being said, your essay still needs to connect your application to your background; in other words, it needs to be relevant to your application. This means that the stories and experiences you choose need to be connected to the broader picture of why you want to pursue an LL.M. degree. Many people struggle with this: Why do I actually want to do an LLM? How do I explain it? How do I connect it to my background? And how do I frame my post-LLM goals in a way that is specific enough?

Part of the problem is that most people interpret the prompt very literally. As a result, they try to answer it in a straightforward manner, writing something along the lines of: ‘The reasons behind my desire to pursue an LLM are two-fold…’

I understand the impulse. Master of laws applicants are often people accustomed to doing things by the book and being good students. And so, many of them begin their LL.M. personal statements by demonstrating that they’ve paid attention to the instructions. They are correct in the sense that, ultimately, your essay does need to address the questions asked. However, essays that are driven by questions often turn out to be weak.

Don’t get me wrong: Including a direct response to the prompt as part of your essay, especially in the closing section, can work. However, when the entire essay is structured solely around answering the question, it risks becoming flat and formulaic.

I'll explain why.

1. Directly answering the prompt does not differentiate you from other applicants

The thing is, if you try to be very direct with your answer, you won’t provide much valuable information to the admissions committee. When you start your essay by directly discussing why you want to pursue a particular program, your options for explaining your motivation to do an LL.M. at Harvard are quite limited: you can talk about the courses that attract you, the faculty, the facilities, specialized resources etc., but beyond that, there isn’t much else.

As I talk in detail elsewhere, a personal statement, in a nutshell, is an essay that connects your past (your background), your present (where you are now), and your future (post-LL.M. plans). However, if you try to answer the prompt directly, you’ll quickly find it very difficult to go in depth into any of these three elements.

Approaching essays this way doesn’t set you apart from other applicants, and one of the problems the admissions committee is trying to solve by asking for a personal statement is differentiation. A place like Harvard will receive many LL.M. applications from individuals whose profiles look equally good. In my own experience evaluating applications, I had to sift through numerous high-quality submissions that looked very similar based on their academic and professional credentials. It was very hard to make a decision based solely on the CV and the application form.

What made a difference was their writing. It has become a cliché in the admissions world, but a personal statement does help you position yourself as more than a sum of your grades, scores, and accomplishments. Your writing reveals how you think, what you value, and what you stand for.

This means that the most effective use of your writing is to go beyond a formal discussion of the courses and classes you want to take. Instead, focus on highlighting your professional development and how you have reached a point in your professional life where pursuing an LL.M. is the next best step to take.

2. Directly answering the prompt does not give enough context to make a decision about your application

For your reasons to pursue an LL.M. to be compelling, you need to put them in context. Otherwise, they just don’t sound convincing. Consider this: If you are attracted to the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, and the Internet and AI are among the hottest topics in the world right now, how many other applicants do you think will mention the same thing in their applications? You guessed it – a lot.

With many people highlighting the same program features that interest them, it’s hard to decide who should get the limited spots in the program.

To help the admissions committee decide, you need to give them more context about your life. Why did you become a lawyer? What has been driving you so far? What are your values and how are they expressed though your actions, projects, and day-to-day life? Why did you choose to specialize in the area that you did? How did you first gain exposure to it? What sparked your interest? Why do you do what you do?

These are just examples of questions you might start asking yourself to write a personal statement that will ultimately get you admitted to Harvard LL.M.

A paradox I’ve observed in many successful applications is that they often arrive at a convincing answer to the ‘why LL.M.’ question after they zoom out and paint a bigger picture of the applicant’s life (provided they keep it relevant to the application).

What’s the solution?

A strategy that I advocate for is to avoid writing your essay by directly answering questions.

I wish someone had told me that when I was writing my essays. I only started making progress with my LL.M. personal statements when I gave myself the freedom to write about my life instead of trying to directly answer the questions asked.

There’s a difference between letting your answer be dictated by the prompt versus sharing the things you want to say while mapping your essay to the questions later. When you let the questions drive your answer, you inevitably end up with a shallow response.

In contrast, when you first decide what you want to communicate to the admissions committee and why, and then map it onto the questions asked, you put yourself in a position of power. You gain influence over what they take away from reading your essay. If there are aspects of your professional and personal identity that aren’t reflected in other parts of the application, you can use your personal statement to make them visible.

Harvard LLM Résumé or CV

I’ve written in depth about the CV that got me into Harvard and my insights on how to write a winning CV for an LLM application before. Here, I’d like to reiterate the most important ideas and highlight a few points that I haven’t discussed yet.

How to format your Harvard LL.M. CV

Under the Harvard LL.M. application guidelines, you are required to submit a CV or a résumé. However, they do not provide specific instructions regarding its format or content.

In general, a standard CV should be no longer than two pages. The exception to this rule applies to academic CVs, which often include publications and details of academic appointments that are essential and cannot be omitted.

When I applied, my CV was three pages long, with one page dedicated to publications. If you do not have publications, I strongly recommend keeping your CV within two pages.

I also advise against including a photo. Doing so can lead to unconscious biases against you. Additionally, I have seen many applicants submit low-quality, unprofessional photos, which can give the impression of a lack of attention to detail and will work against you in the evaluation process.

The specific format you choose matters less than how well you use that format. The key factor you should optimize for is readability. A common mistake I see among LL.M. candidates is that they fall so in love with everything they've done that they indiscriminately list all their experiences without prioritization (I was certainly guilty of that one as well 🙈). As a result, the reader cannot easily scan the most important information and has to work harder to process the CV.

Your primary objective when writing and organizing your Harvard LL.M. CV is to ensure that all crucial details about your academic and professional background are clear and unambiguous.

There is one point I find myself repeating so often that I now wonder if it’s even worth mentioning — but I continue to see this mistake frequently: Your education comes first. If you look at the HLS résumé templates, you will not find any examples where professional experience is listed before education. You should always begin with education.

Should you include high school experiences in your Harvard LL.M. CV?

As a general rule, high school experiences should not be included in your CV. One reason for this is that your high school achievements helped you get into university, whereas an LL.M. application is about the later developments in your academic and professional journey that have led you to this point.

Another reason is that where you attended high school is not truly your achievement but primarily a reflection of your parents’ resources or another systemic (dis)advantage. If you attended a prestigious high school, making it explicit may come across as an attempt to show off privilege.

That being said, I personally could not resist including a specific high school achievement that was incredibly important to me and that I consider to be entirely my own: winning All-Russian Olympiads in Law.

I have written about this before, but these competitions were the only real means of upward social mobility available to me at the time (not that I was aware of it back then). While in high school, I won three federal Olympiads with zero support from anyone, studying on my own for 10 to 12 hours a day. This achievement was so significant to my personal and professional growth that it quite literally made me into who I am today.

However, when including it on my CV, I framed it differently to underscore its significance while deemphasizing the fact that it happened in high school. This was relatively easy because the prize was awarded a year after I got it, during my first year of university. Instead of listing it as a high school accomplishment, I described it as being named a Laureate of the Presidential Scholarship and the Governor of the Moscow Region’s Scholarship. I placed it in the "Achievements" section (which I would now title "Prizes and Awards").

Should you wait to apply until you garner more accomplishments?

A question I get often is: What if I don’t have enough on my CV? Should I wait a few years and apply later?

I believe that that the only time you should wait is when you don’t meet a specific eligibility requirement, but you know you’ll meet it later. For instance, the Chevening Scholarship and Columbia Law School ask for 2+ years of work experience, and it stands to reason that you'll have a better chance of success if you apply once you meet that requirement. Otherwise, I believe your time is better spent developing your writing skills – for example, by engaging in co-curricular activities that would require you to write.

Writing plays a crucial role in admission. It’s more important than any line on your CV could possibly be. A great CV is not going to save you from poor writing, but excellent writing can elevate your application.

What is the ideal profile of a Harvard LL.M. applicant?

Another question I get is: Who is the ideal candidate?

There is no such thing as an ideal candidate. However, there is such a thing as a strong candidate. The strength of a candidacy is built on multiple cumulative factors, such as academics, English proficiency, the written component, recommendations, and other accomplishments. There is no magic list of achievements that will guarantee admission or disqualify you. Broadly speaking, the admissions committee looks for someone who goes beyond what is merely required.

My personal philosophy is to work with what you have rather than striving to meet some abstract ideal. Everybody has dramatically different capabilities and resources, and what you have on your CV will depend on what you’ve been exposed to and what opportunities were available to you. It’s impossible – and honestly quite pointless – to try to fit a predefined mold.

For instance, if I had been chasing the image of an ideal Harvard LL.M. candidate, I might have researched what American law students do. I might have found out that Americans place a lot of value on court clerkships and law journals. But for me, given where I was, that would have been utterly unhelpful. In Russia, court clerkships are not considered prestigious – they are typically (although not always) pursued by students with lower grades who couldn't get a job in the private sector. Moreover, clerkships are so severely underpaid that it makes them viable predominantly for students with alternative sources of income.

The same goes for law journals. The concept of a student-run law journal was unfamiliar to me. While my university had a student gazette, it was not particularly engaging, and the journals I knew of were professional, peer-reviewed publications.

So, trying to do what an ‘ideal’ American student would do would have been pointless or impossible for me. Instead, I focused on what was available to me. For instance, I attended academic conferences for students, an activity fairly unique to Russia and some other post-Soviet countries. These conferences had a competitive element: for each, participants had to write a report – essentially an essay on a legal topic. You had to identify a legal issue, research it, and present an analysis or solution, similar to Harvard’s personal statement part A. Afterward, participants would present their reports and compete for prizes. One of my reports was later published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Attending these conferences gave me valuable practice in the skills I later needed for my LL.M. and PhD applications. If I had chased the image of an “ideal” American candidate instead of engaging with the opportunities I had, I might have never developed them.

Harvard LL.M. Letters of Recommendation

Harvard asks you to submit at least two letters of recommendation, noting that most applicants submit three.

What is the purpose of an LL.M. recommendation letter?

The purpose of a recommendation letter is to corroborate your words. Everything else in the Harvard LL.M. application consists of things you have said. Recommendations help the admissions committee see what others who have worked with you have to say about you. This means that, beyond the school’s requirements, it does not matter what the recommender’s specialty is. They are not commenting on how well you know a particular subject; rather, they are assessing your skillset and character.

In other words, it doesn’t matter if your recommender is a professor of international law and you’ve been doing corporate law for years. What matters is whether this person knows you well enough to say good things about you.

Do recommendations have to be academic or professional?

Fortunately, Harvard's LL.M application guidelines explicitly state that letters may be written by either "law faculty members who know you well" or "persons for whom you have worked in a professional capacity." This means they don't have a preference for academic recommendations. This differs from, for example, Oxford, which explicitly prefers academic recommendations.

My strategy is to prioritize academic recommendations for the simple reason that what academic recommenders focus on aligns closely with what Harvard will be looking for — qualities that demonstrate your ability to excel in an academic program like the LL.M.

Professional recommendations, while entirely acceptable, may require some adaptation. Qualities that are valued in the workplace do not always translate directly to an academic setting. For example, teamwork is highly valued in many jobs, especially corporate roles, but is less critical for an LL.M. application.

Instead, the qualities you'd want to highlight include:

• Academic excellence and intellectual rigor
• Commitment to the study of your chosen field
• Curiosity and engagement beyond the minimum curriculum requirements
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to connect with other people

An LL.M. is a shared learning experience, and the admissions committee will be looking for evidence that you can build networks and professional connections.

It is usually a good idea to provide your recommenders with a list of key qualities and experiences you would like them to emphasize. Ensure that the recommendation explains how the recommender knows you, as this helps the admissions committee understand how much to trust this person's view of you. Also make sure the examples your recommender speaks of are the things the recommender credibly knows of or is supposed to know of.

Whom not to ask for a letter of recommendation?

Never, under any circumstances, ask a person who is related to you or otherwise personally connected to you, such as a family friend, to write a recommendation.

• A recommender with a personal connection to you cannot provide an objective and competent assessment of your character.
• One might argue that all letters of recommendation are inherently biased, as they come from individuals who think highly of you. However, with professors or work supervisors, their favorable opinion is presumed to be based on your actual performance and abilities.
• With friends or family, the nature of the relationship suggests they are predisposed to speak positively of you, regardless of your achievements.

Similarly, do not ask someone who is high-status but does not know your work well. I assumed this was obvious until I got so many questions about it that I realized it was not.

• No matter how much you wish it were true, a recommender’s prestige does not transfer to you.
• If they do not know you well, they cannot provide a meaningful evaluation of your character, skills, and abilities.
• This will harm your application in two ways:
  1. Their letter will not effectively corroborate what you have written in your LL.M. application.
  2. It will signal to the admissions committee that, even when you had full control over choosing your recommenders, you did not make a strategic choice and your judgment is flawed.

My Harvard LL.M. recommendation letters

When requesting letters of recommendation for my own Harvard LL.M. application, I specifically asked my recommenders to phrase their letters in terms of achievement and ability.

During my research on best practices for recommendation letters, I came across studies highlighting gender differences in recommendation language. These studies found that, with comparable qualifications, male applicants were often described in terms of ability and excellence—portrayed as "naturally talented" — whereas female applicants were more frequently described as "diligent students" who worked hard to compensate for a lack of inherent ability.

To counteract this, I explicitly asked my recommenders to highlight my ability and excellence and to give specific examples to illustrate it.

I had three recommenders:

• my PhD supervisor at the time,
• my civil law professor who supervised my course papers,
• initially, my international law professor. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, he was unable to provide a recommendation at the last minute. Fortunately, a professor from QMUL who had taught me at The Hague Academy and Paris Arbitration Academy kindly agreed to write one instead.

For my supervisor's letter, I was then in my second year of the PhD, so I asked him to highlight several key aspects:

• That I had passed my PhD examinations with excellent results.
• The process of selecting my doctoral thesis topic, which was particularly significant to me. It took months of work, multiple discussions with my supervisor, and reviewing tons of literature on multiple potential topics. In the end, I opted for the place of performance and its role in private international law and international civil procedure.
• The challenges I faced in my research. Since there was virtually no literature on this subject in Russian, I had to overcome two major obstacles: procuring relevant materials from European libraries and developing a theoretical framework from scratch for the Russian law. Given the effort and significance of this work, I wanted to ensure it was explicitly mentioned in the recommendation.

For my second professor, I’ve written about his letter of recommendation here, regarding my MIDS application.

As for my third recommender, I don’t know exactly what she wrote because I waived my right to see the recommendation. But I suppose it was something good - after all, I was accepted! I imagine she discussed my work during the Directed Studies at The Hague Academy, my experience taking the Hague Academy diploma exam, and the fact that I successfully passed the written stage of the exam.

academic Transcripts & Grades

As part of your Harvard LL.M. application, you’ll need to submit both a transcript (your grades and course list) and a diploma (your degree certificate). If you're still enrolled in a program, you’ll need to provide a current transcript and a confirmation of enrollment.

Transcripts are also required for law exchange programs and any academic programs longer than six months.

During the application phase, all transcripts can be submitted in electronic form.

Do Grades Matter?

Unlike universities like Oxford, Harvard does not have strict GPA cutoffs. However, admissions are highly competitive, and the average GPA in the applicant pool will be very high.

While grades aren’t everything, they are still important — more than many applicants wish they were. Here are a few key points to consider:

• Your university's prestige matters, but not as much as you think. You don't need a degree from a top university to get into a strong LL.M. program like Harvard.
• Grades matter more than university ranking. Excellent grades from a good university are better than poor grades from an elite one.
• Core course grades carry the most weight. Strong performance in your law courses is more important than high grades in unrelated subjects.

How Harvard Admissions Committee Evaluates Grades

Admissions committees, especially at universities that receive applications from around the world like Harvard, are familiar with various national education systems. When I evaluated LL.M. and Ph.D. applications at the European University Institute, I received detailed guidelines on required GPAs, reputable universities, and other resources.

However, even with these tools, admissions officers may not fully understand the nuances of each and every education system. If they’re unfamiliar with your university’s reputation and can't find much information about it, they will rely on your grades.

Core vs. Non-Core Courses: How They Impact Your LL.M. Application

• Example 1: Student X has mostly A’s, with a few B’s in her law degree and a C in economics. If she applies for a Harvard LL.M., her transcript likely won’t be a problem since her core law grades are strong. However, if she were applying for a Master’s in Economics, that C could hurt her chances.
• Example 2: Student Y has a law degree but multiple B’s and C’s in core law courses. If they apply for an LL.M., admission or a scholarship at a top university is less likely.

Harvard LL.M. English Proficiency Requirements

Under Harvard's LL.M. application guidelines, applicants from non-English-speaking countries are required to submit TOEFL results. TOEFL results must be no more than two years old. The minimum required score is 100, with at least 25 in each subsection (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). A waiver may be requested if the applicant has completed at least two consecutive years of full-time university education entirely in English.

If you’re considering applying for a waiver, it’s essential to understand that the test is not just a bureaucratic formality – it is a critical piece of evidence demonstrating your English proficiency. More importantly, it serves as proof that you have the necessary language skills to successfully undertake rigorous academic work in English.

Many LL.M. applicants who request a waiver fail to recognize this. They see the waiver as an exemption from obtaining a document and focus solely on their inability to take the test in their location. However, for an admissions committee member, this approach is unhelpful. Their primary concern is whether your English is strong enough for you to succeed in the program. If you do not provide alternative evidence of your language proficiency, you leave them no choice but to consider your application incomplete. Worse, it signals that you are unable to look beyond formal requirements to grasp their actual purpose.

Harvard, for example, rarely grants language test waivers except in truly exceptional circumstances. However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Think about it: If you don’t request a waiver, you are guaranteed not to receive one. However, if you do, you at least have a chance. Some universities, such as Oxford, may also consider waivers based on professional experience (e.g, if you worked in English for 2+ years). Harvard doesn’t, but if you have grounds for it, I’d still include it in your waiver request to strengthen your argument.

Above all, remember that what the admissions committee seeks is clear proof that you can handle intensive academic work in English. If you fail to provide this evidence, they will have no choice but to reject your waiver request. Simply stating that you cannot obtain the required document frustrates the purpose of the requirement. In doing so, you risk demonstrating a lack of legal reasoning skills — an inability to understand the core objective behind the rule.

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Hope this helps, and good luck! ☺️