The Best Extracurriculars for a Competitive Harvard LL.M. Application

I often get asked to assess someone’s profile and predict their chances of admission to a prestigious LL.M. program like Harvard. My answer is always the same: it’s very difficult to say. Your profile is just one factor in a larger decision-making process. Other crucial elements include your writing — your essays, such as the motivation letter and any required legal writing samples — and the overall LL.M. applicant pool. And, (un)fortunately, luck plays a role too, as it does in so many aspects of life.

My approach to admissions is about helping you uncover and highlight the valuable things you’ve already done rather than trying to fit an imaginary “ideal” mold. My experiences as an LL.M. applicant, a multiple-time admissions committee member, and an expert in this field is that there is no single "ideal" LL.M. candidate — only strong and weak ones.

The next logical question, then, is what makes a strong candidate?

1. The Basics

The foundation of your LL.M. application includes your academic degrees, grades, and English proficiency. These are the baseline requirements. While for a school like Harvard they do need to meet a certain threshold, they don’t always have to be stellar. Admissions committees evaluate applicants holistically — they see you as a person, not just a collection of documents.

2. Professional and Academic Activities

Beyond academics, what you’ve done outside the classroom matters. There’s no single activity that guarantees admission. It depends on where you're from and what opportunities you’ve had access to. What the admissions committee really looks for is whether you have gone beyond what was merely required. The how is up to you.

In this post, I’ll walk through the activities that were on my own CV—things that I believe demonstrated my passion for law and contributed to my admission. Please keep in mind that this isn’t a template. It’s just what I had. You don’t need to have these exact experiences. You have your own story, and it will be different. If you’re unsure how to analyze your profile, I wrote more about that here.

2.1. Publications

During my first four years of law school, I attended around 11 student conferences. I remember they were one of the few things you could do in law school, and I was desperately looking to do something interesting. A friend who led our law faculty’s student scientific society invited me to join, and I soon became involved in organizing some conferences and presenting at others.

For each conference, I had to find a legal issue, identify and study relevant literature, and write a report. Some reports were theoretical, while others connected legal theory with practice. A few were just really fun — one explored agency and representation relationships in the Harry Potter universe, and another, presented at an intellectual property rights conference called Baba Yaga (named after the Russian fairy tale character), was themed around the resale rights of artists (droit de suite).

Unlike their Western counterparts, these student conferences awarded prizes for best reports — such as a publication in a peer-reviewed journal or law books. This way, I had two high-quality peer-reviewed publications even before graduating from law school.

Later, during my internship in Brussels at the Association for International Arbitration, I co-authored a policy paper on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), wrote several legal commentaries on current court judgments, and helped organize a conference on antitrust issues in arbitration. I applied for that internship primarily to find an entry point to international arbitration but unexpectedly, the work I did there laid the foundation for many of my academic endeavors.

By the time I applied for my LL.M., I had 11 publications on my CV (plus two translations). I’d say it’s a bit extreme — you absolutely don’t need that many. In my view, if you have one, it can already be an excellent demonstration of your academic rigor and curiosity.

2.2. Translations

I also had a section on academic translations on my Harvard CV. It may sound unfamiliar, so I'll explain.

At the Lomonosov Moscow State University, comparative law was heavily emphasized. We never studied Russian law in isolation or as strictly 'law on the books'; rather, we studied a particular legal problem and solutions to it as developed in various legal traditions. This focus became even stronger during the major private law reform happening at the time, as legal scholars sought foreign perspectives to modernize the civil code.

In this context, translating foreign legal texts into Russian to make them available to a broader audience was an important academic contribution to the dissemination of knowledge. For instance, a friend of mine translated the criminal procedure codes of multiple German-speaking countries into Russian. I participated in translating Austria’s consumer credit law, as there was an ongoing reform of Russia’s consumer credit law, and the Austrian example was one of the models considered. That project mattered so much to me that I even asked my professor, who had commissioned the translation, to mention it in his recommendation letter for my LL.M. applications (see, eg, here).

I also translated two academic articles — one on the general theory of contractual obligations (English to Russian) and another on securities law (German to Russian). Back then, AI translation tools didn’t exist, so this work required in-depth expertise in legal terminology and a high-level mastery of the source languages. In addition, none of that work was paid - I did it on a sheer enthusiasm for the project. It was deeply meaningful for me, and I wanted to have it seen and appreciated by the members of the LL.M. admissions committees as well.

2.3. Memberships

I listed several memberships on my Harvard CV, including Young ICCA, ICC YAF, YIAG, and the Youth Human Rights Movement.

As a student, I was very interested in joining international lawyer communities but didn’t quite know how to engage with them, as they weren’t well-represented in Russia. The one exception was ELSA (European Law Students’ Association), where I attended a summer school on human rights in Zadar, Croatia, and made a lot of friends. Anyway, the membership section of my CV was brief, and I am not sure if and how it affected my admission to Harvard LL.M. My main goal was to demonstrate that I am committed to building relationships with other lawyers, including across borders.

2.4. Competitions and Scholarships

Throughout law school, I participated in law competitions, similar to high school Olympiads that I described in detail in my other posts. Twice, I competed in the Olympiad’s private law section, which involved a specialized oral examination on multiple aspects of private law. I noted the prizes I received in the “Achievements” section of my Harvard CV.

2.5. Distinctions for Writing

At Lomonosov Moscow State University, we did a lot of writing. Every year, we had to submit a course paper (minimum 25 pages, though mine were usually 40–60 pages). Our final-year graduation thesis had a 50-page requirement (I wrote 80 🙈).

I’d say that every major paper I wrote received a distinction. My second-year course paper won a prize, and my graduation thesis was commended by the examination committee. I included these distinctions on my Harvard CV as well.

I didn’t list high school awards, though I had one from an essay competition on human rights (and an MP3 player as a prize). Later on, both my Harvard master’s thesis and my doctoral dissertation received prizes.

I’m sorry if it sounds like bragging 🙈. I just love academic writing. A lot. And because I love I, I do a lot of it. And because I do a lot of it, I got really good at it.

2.6. Moot Courts

Moot courts are one of the most common ways to distinguish yourself in an LL.M. application. I’ve written a lot about them before, so I won’t go into detail here.

One thing I will say: It’ll depend on your circumstances, but moot courts don’t necessarily require a lot of institutional support. It can be a bottom-up initiative. For instance, my participation in the Concours Charles-Rousseau, a French-language moot, happened because a friend took the initiative to organize it at our faculty — no one had done it before her (please see more here).

Even if you don’t raise funding to go abroad (I hope you do, though!), doing a moot in your home country is a viable alternative. It can already be a showcase of your skills, enthusiasm, and potential. So if you don’t have fancy law firms funding your team, please don’t despair. There is a lot you can do, and your ability to go to a prestigious university for an LLM should not depend on whether you could afford to compete in Vienna or Washington D.C.

Conclusion

The main takeaway I’d like to leave you with is: Work with what you have.

It’s easy to believe that getting into Harvard requires private tutors, elite schools, and an expensive, pre-planned trajectory. I didn’t have any of that. More importantly, I didn’t even realize that not having those things could be a disadvantage — and, ironically, that turned out to be one of my biggest advantages.

I just enjoyed being a lawyer and studying law. I participated in what I had access to.

My general belief is that you don’t “build” a Harvard-ready profile in a few months. Instead, you live a life that is conducive to the path you want to take.

From my experience, most applicants do have enough; they just don’t recognize the value in what they’ve already done. Some people will help you “build” a profile from scratch. And while this can be a valid approach, I do things differently. What I do is help you see the beauty in what you already have and make it shine.

And yes, you also need luck. But then again, don’t we all?