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Big law firms don't care about your LL.M., recruiter warns: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticlePr ... 2537948154

It would seem that yet another aspect of the moneymaking apparatus that is law school is finally getting its day in the press. Full disclosure, I'm a JD/LLM and by the skin of my teeth, it worked out for me. I've met one other joint student it worked out for from my non-tax program and 30-some who are scrambling for anything.

The biggest advantage of an LLM is when it is done as a JD/LLM and lets you get a second bite at OCI because your school keeps you as a 2L for bidding purposes. This makes it worthless for people trying to polish a lower ranked JD by going to a higher ranked LLM program because no school will let them re-do OCI in the same manner. I've even had friends who got no-offered at firms (and therefore couldn't bid as a 2L in the JD/LLM program) enroll in the JD/LLM program, thinking they were getting some benefit and not realizing they had already missed out on the only benefit of the program.

What will it take to get the domestic-LLM enrollment to finally come around to the reality that has been in the NYT/ATL recently about the JD programs at most school?

"...with the exception of LLMs for foreign trained attorneys & tax LLMs".

CanadianWolf wrote:"...with the exception of LLMs for foreign trained attorneys & tax LLMs".

Those are two pretty narrow given sheer number of other programs that admit domestic JD on http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal ... egory.html

I would add a block to the flow chart...right after "Is the LL.M. in tax?" I would insert "Are you morally certain that you want to spend the rest of your professional life doing virtually nothing but tax?"

As to all those other LL.M.s...the law schools not only have zero research to demonstrate that doing one of their non-tax programs will confer any benefit upon the student AT ALL, they make it pretty clear that they don't care. The LL.M. is a cash cow, nothing more. The growth in LL.M.programs is driven by student demand, not employer demand, and the students' demand is driven by the universal American superstition that more formal education is always better.

Astrology is no more baseless a superstition than the value of doing a non-tax LL.M. and the former is a good deal cheaper.