Navigating the LL.M. Application: Your Complete Guide to Core Components

In this Guide, I’d like to distill the key components of a successful master of laws (LL.M.) application - what I refer to as the anatomy of a successful application.

LL.M. programs may vary in terms of the documents they require. However, most will include the following components:

• application form
• university diplomas and transcripts
• CV or résumé
• letters of recommendation, usually 2 or 3, typically academic
• personal statement, statement of purpose, or motivation letter (any kind of essay explaining your background, reasons for applying, and plans for the future)
• language test if you’re not a native English speaker or do not have another exemption

I've created a downloadable version of this Guide, with a checklist of the application components you can use to track your progress.

You can also check out my recommendations on how to plan the timeline for the various components of your LL.M. application in this post or this downloadable guide.

application form

The application form functions as the container for your application. It includes questions you need to answer, spaces for longer responses and essays, and sections where you attach required documents. It provides the admissions committee with a bird’s eye view of your profile.

Many questions on the application form will overlap with information found in other parts of your application, such as your CV. Additionally, the application form may contain unique essay prompts and questions that you must answer.

I suggest reviewing the application form as one of the first steps in the application process to familiarize yourself with the exact requirements (if it’s been published – though you don’t have to wait for it; you can begin preparing your applications earlier). This will help you gauge the full scope of your commitments regarding the application materials. The key is to ensure that your application form is consistent with the documents you attach, such as your CV, letters of recommendation, and essays. It's important to be careful and attentive but not stress too much over the application form.

The reason many questions on the application form may seem redundant compared to your CV is that, unfortunately, most people are notoriously bad at describing their life experiences clearly and effectively. When I sat on the admissions committee, I often struggled to determine what a given applicant did, where, and when, as the information provided on their CV was vague. Additionally, applicants often use various CV formats, which can unintentionally obscure the content.

If you find it frustrating to provide the same information twice, remember that it’s not a waste of time. It’s to ensure the admissions committee accurately understands the key details of your profile.

academic transcripts

For most LL.M. applications, you’ll need to submit academic transcripts from the universities you’ve attended.

This part of the application is quite technical. Sometimes you’ll be asked to upload a simple scan (common in Europe). Other times, you’ll need to send the paper transcripts by mail (common in the US).

Request your transcripts from the university as early as possible in the application process to account for the potential delays due to bureaucracy, the need for translations, postal speed, and the human factor involved in requesting transcripts from a 3rd party and sending them overseas.

If you're only asked to submit scans of your transcripts rather than paper copies, do so. Don’t attempt to hide poor grades by submitting only some transcripts or not submitting them at all. Besides making you look dishonest, an incomplete application will most probably be disqualified on formal grounds.

Grades are important. I wish I could tell you otherwise. However, there are a few considerations to note.

• First, the caliber of your previous university(-ies) matters, but not as much you think it does. If you didn't attend a top university, you can still gain into a great LL.M. program.
• Second, grades matter more than the caliber of your university. Excellent grades from a good university are better than poor grades from a top university.
• Third, the most important grades are those for core courses and those relevant to the program you’re applying to.

Let me explain.

Selection committees, especially for programs that regularly receive applications from all over the world, are typically knowledgeable about various national education systems. When I evaluated LL.M. and Ph.D. applications at the European University Institute, I received clear and thorough guidelines regarding required GPAs, reputable universities, and resources to look up additional information.

However, even with all this information, the committee may not have an in-depth understanding of a national education system as an insider would. As a result, a member of the admissions committee might encounter a transcript from a university whose quality they can’t easily ascertain. In such cases, their only way of evaluating an application is by examining the grades.

Regarding the relative weight of grades for core and non-core courses, here are some examples:

• Imagine Student X has straight As with a couple of Bs for her bachelor’s in law and a C in economics. She's now applying to pursue her master of laws. Her transcripts likely won’t pose a problem because she has stellar grades in the core law courses, and economics is not one of them. However, if she applied for a master’s in economics, that could be a different story.
• Student Y has a bachelor’s transcript with many s and Cs in the core law courses. She's now applying for a master of laws. It’s unlikely she’ll gain admission or a scholarship to a top university.

I understand that assessing a person based on their grades may seem superficial and technical. Numerous factors can influence your grades, and the end result isn't always within your control.

For instance, at Moscow State University, we only had oral exams. You’d draw a card with a question and answer it on the spot. There was no barrier between you and the professor, and some professors abused their power by distributing grades based not on how well you performed but on how much they liked you. I know people whose transcripts were ruined by a low grade from such a professor.

However, consider it from the admissions committee's perspective:

Education is the only qualification you have that allows them to compare your profile with those of other applicants. The selection committee can't compare you with another candidate based on your jobs or community service – they're just too different for everyone, even within the same country. There's no metric to use to identify who’d be a better candidate for a place of a master’s program. On the other hand, education is something everyone has, at least in the context of master’s applications.

In that sense, your transcripts and grades act as an equalizer. They make the same program accessible to people regardless of their nationality, race, ethnicity, place of origin, native language, etc. They create a level playing field, so everyone gets the same chance, regardless of their resources.

language test or an exemption from it

A language test is another often mandatory component of an LL.M. application.

It’s important to understand that the language test serves a technical function: to demonstrate that you meet the minimum requirements for studying in your target language. That’s it. There is no bonus for achieving the highest score - you just need to meet the threshold requirements. It’s binary.

This means you should, of course, prepare for the language test, but don't place excessive weight on it. Rather, focus on documents that can actually add value, such as personal statements, a CV, an essay on a legal topic, and securing strong letters of recommendation.

Be very careful when choosing a test. It’s best to decide after you’ve selected a country and universities, as the accepted tests can differ. For instance, many American universities only accept TOEFL, and in my view TOEFL is poorly adapted for non-native speakers, so if given a choice, I’d take IELTS.

Notably, a language test is a not test of your language skills. Rather, it’s a test of your ability to perform a very specific set of tasks – keep that in mind and train yourself to do those particular types of tasks.

In my experience, a language test can be a significant barrier to education. Not because of the level of language proficiency required – that’s a given – but because of the ancillary costs associated with taking the test. It’s quite expensive, and testing centers may not be readily available in your location.

If obtaining a language test is extremely difficult for you and you decided to apply for an exemption, make sure to substantiate your situation clearly and comprehensively. Regardless of what's happening globally, the admissions committee doesn't know your world - you do. It's your responsibility to explain it. Don’t just submit a brief excuse; describe the difficult circumstances in detail.

Additionally, provide proof of your language skills. If you are a qualified lawyer, that’s the bare minimum you should be able to do – make a statement and supply evidence to support it. Perhaps you took courses entirely in English or worked in English – whatever it is, if you can’t take a test, provide alternative evidence of your language competence.

CV or résumé

A CV or a résumé is another common component of an LL.M. application. It’s usually one of the first documents the admissions committee will read, after the application form and academic transcripts.

Given the number of applications the committee evaluates daily, they will likely spend very little time reading your CV.

In essence, a CV is a basic framework of your experience - a distilled version of it. To put it differently, it's a factual map of your life.

It must therefore be a concise, persuasive summary of your educational and professional qualifications.

Your CV is also one of the guarantors of your eligibility. Since it's one of the first documents the admissions committee will review, it should immediately demonstrate that you have the required skills and experience that qualify you for the programs you’ve chosen.

The most important thing to remember is that your education should be listed before your professional experience. You are applying for a master’s, not a job. A master’s is an academic endeavor, and you’ll be evaluated based on your academic merit first. Your education, therefore, matters the most to the selection committee.

Make sure your education is easy to find. It should always be at the very beginning of a CV, always before employment, always on the first page. It doesn’t matter that your post-education experience was more impressive, or that you’ve been out of school for a while.

I’ve written more about the most common mistakes and my guidelines to avoid them here. You can also read my post about using the Stanford approach to drafting a CV here.

letters of recommendation

A letter of recommendation is an evaluation of your professional and personal characteristics by someone who knows you well. It’s a crucial part of an application. If your profile has weaknesses, a letter of recommendation can offset or even neutralize them. A good letter can explain your grades or a gap in your CV. It can give your an edge when the admissions committee compares your applications to similar ones.

Recommendation letters work towards the same goal as the other application documents, which is to build an argument as to why you are the right  candidate. This means that letters of recommendation should not only discuss your objective academic merit but also make a case for your academic fitness and how you meet the program’s criteria.

There is no standard as to who your recommender should be, and most universities will specify from whom they want to hear.

Example, recommendation for a scholarship from the American Association of University Women:

Provide three recommendations from professors or professional colleagues well acquainted with the applicant, their work, and their academic background, in striving towards scholarly pursuits. When possible, recommenders should be professors or professional colleagues in the applicant’s home country who can speak about the applicant’s qualifications and about the country’s need for the specialized skill or knowledge they plan to acquire with their proposed study or research

Another example, reference for the Gates Cambridge Scholarship:

In addition to two academic references for admission, Gates Cambridge applicants must arrange for someone to submit a reference setting out how they meet the scholarship’s criteria. In the application form we ask: Please give your assessment of the applicant’s suitability for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. These are awarded on the following criteria: intellectual ability, justification for the choice of course, a commitment to improving the lives of others and leadership capacity. We also ask: How highly would you rank the applicant for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship? On what overall group are you basing this ranking? What is the size of this group?

Before deciding on your recommenders, carefully study the requirements on the university’s website or the application form. If they don't specify who the recommender should be, a good policy is to ask someone who knows you well, either a professor or a senior colleague from work. Don’t ask someone of high status who doesn’t know you well. They will be poorly equipped to comment on your profile, which will reflect negatively on your judgment (because you chose that person) and ultimately your application.

Before approaching a recommender:

• Review your qualifications that appear on your CV, motivation letter, and any other application documents.

• Consider qualifications and achievements that 1) are not reflected in these documents, 2) are important for the program, based on the information you can gather from their website, 3) your recommender knows or is expected to know. Write all of these down. This is your long list of content for the recommendation.
• Decide which ones you’d like to have mentioned in the letter of recommendation.
• If the recommender is writing a letter for you, politely and nicely ask them to include the things you’ve chosen in the letter.
• If the recommender asks you to provide a draft, include the things you’ve chosen in the letter yourself and clarify in the accompanying email, politely and nicely, why it’s important for you to have them mentioned.

Make it easy for the admissions committee to find what they are looking for and choose you.

personal statements, motivation letters, and statements of purpose

This type of document can bear a variety of names – cover letter, motivation letter, personal statement, supporting statement, statement of purpose, or simply an essay. The important thing to know is that the name of the letter does not matter - not as much as you think it would. Names vary depending on the customary practice in a particular country or university, and other factors as well.

This is good news: It means that most essays you submit in support of your applications will largely be governed by the same principles, so you won’t have to write each one from scratch. Instead, you’ll be able to write a few and customize them for each program.

The term I use most often is ‘personal statement’, so I’ll stick to that.

A personal statement is an essay where you talk about your background, your professional goals, and how a particular LL.M. program aligns with your career plans. You talk about your past, your present, and plans for the future. You answer questions like, why do you want to pursue a master’s? Why do you need this particular degree at this particular time of your life and career? What are you going to do with it afterwards?

Personal statement is by far one of the most important documents in your application, and you should take it seriously. The reason it’s so important is that it's the document you have the most control over. It's also the only document where your voice comes through. Other documents, like your CV or letters of recommendation, complete the package, but the personal statement shows that you can advocate for yourself.

It gives you a chance to show your personality and become more than a sum of your grades, test scores, and accomplishments.

I’ve written extensively about the process of developing a strong personal statement on this blog. I’ve also created a self-paced course that walks you through the 5-step method of writing a personal statement that I developed over the years - you can check it out here. 

essay on a legal topic

Sometimes, you may be required to submit an essay on a legal topic. Depending on the program, it may be considered a part of a personal statement or as a standalone written work.

Essentially, it is a written piece of analysis on a legal topic.

The goal of this essay is to show the admissions committee how you think and write. Law is a verbal pursuit, and a legal essay is a snapshot of your lawyering abilities. It allows the admissions committee to see your professional skills in action.

Additionally, for top universities like Harvard and Oxford, the legal essay serves as an additional filter for candidates. Writing it requires significant effort, which means fewer candidates go through the trouble of doing it. This narrows down the pool of eligible candidates that the admissions committee will later have to sift through.

I wrote an in-depth guide to an essay on a legal topic, covering the choice of a topic, collecting literature, writing the first draft, editing, etc. You can access Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Conclusion

These are the core components of an LL.M. application. As you can see, except for the academic transcripts and the language test, all of them contain what I'd call ‘soft’ data. This means their impact on your application is not easily quantifiable.

I’ll give you an example. If you apply for an MBA and your dream school is Harvard, you’ll need to take the GMAT. For Harvard Business School, the average GMAT score is 730. If you score below that, it’ll be difficult for you to get in because the test scores are the hard, quantitative data that the admissions committee relies on to eliminate applicants.

Now, if you don’t have test scores like this - and I do not count language tests because, as I mentioned, their function is technical (if the schools were allowed to differentiate among applicants based on language abilities, they would only accept native speakers) - then your application almost entirely consists of soft data.

This is good news because it means your success is largely in your hands, and there is a lot that you can control. Your applications will include facts from your background and your subjective interpretations of what those facts meant for you. You can do very little to change the facts (nor should you), but you can do a lot with the interpretations. This means that even if you think you’ve done ‘nothing special’, you probably just have not interpreted your background in way that highlights the value of your achievements.

You are welcome to check out a downloadable version of this Guide, with a checklist of the application components that I've developed to make it easier to track your application progress.