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I'm curious if these foreigners getting LLM's to practice in the US are just being conned, or if there are any successful attorneys who have gone this route.

I know several who have pulled it off and work at large firms here in the US, in litigation, tax, and corporate. (It is much more common in corporate, though. I don't know if that is because firms don't like to hire foreign litigators and tax attorneys as much as they like foreign corporate associates or whether there are simply more corporate-side people who go this route.)

I know one former English barrister working as a big law litigator, and he had an LLB from a fancy UK school. I also had a French LLM student in one of my classes last semester who got a biglaw offer. But, on the other hand, I recently met two Canadian LLM students who were unemployed and pounding the pavement for work in the US.

Anonymous User wrote:I know several who have pulled it off and work at large firms here in the US, in litigation, tax, and corporate. (It is much more common in corporate, though. I don't know if that is because firms don't like to hire foreign litigators and tax attorneys as much as they like foreign corporate associates or whether there are simply more corporate-side people who go this route.)

I imagine this is related to the fact that a lot of US firms have overseas offices that they staff with US trained corporate lawyers. Hiring lawyers from those countries is a good way to get lawyers working in these offices long term(foreign rotations for a year or two are good but relatively few people will want to relocate permanently). There are very few US litigators/tax lawyers working in overseas offices.

As to the original question yes it is possible, but is also a lot harder than with a JD. You need pretty stellar credentials.

its mostly a con. Big US firms will take LLMs from tip top schools but you don't see T25 LLMs in any biglaw environment. LLM from GW or Fordham? Go fly a kite, you are getting totally ripped off. LLM from CLS? You can get biglaw, but I am unsure the odds

ti's fair.

if firms want to hire they should hire foreign JDs first.

I've had experience with foreign students who were doing JDs and those doing LLMs at my T20.

You'll be amazed at how smarter and more capable the former are.

Aren't most of these people getting LLMs to advance their careers in their home country, not to switch to working in the US?