Why I Chose a JD/LLM

Before we get too much farther, I feel like I should catch you all up on my law school decision process. I decided to go to law school in first grade, when my family would play “court.” I know, I know, it was ridiculous, but on days when we didn’t have school and they had to work, my parents would drop me and my little sister off at our grandparents’ house so they could watch us. Inevitably we’d eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches on white bread (which, let me tell you, was a commodity since my Mom never let us have anything but wheat at home) and play court. My Grandpa would pretend to have committed some terrible crime – which were typically no more terrible than taking too many free samples at the grocery store – and we’d put him on trial. My sister would judge, my Grandma would be the defense attorney, and I’d play the part of the hardball prosecutor with a vendetta against societal wrongs.

The older I got, however, the less I wanted to be the prosecutor and the more I wanted to be the defense attorney. After all, who actually wants to have a vendetta against societal wrongs? I began to want to help people, not necessarily to get out of crimes, but to right some wrong society had done to them. On top of that, both of the grandparents who so graciously let me rant my little heart out at six years old about people who broke the rules were immigrants to the United States, and their stories inspired me. By the time I graduated high school, I wanted to be an immigration lawyer.

Immigration law is an interesting field, or so I’ve learned. It involves a lot of cases and a short amount of time, and most of the time you don’t get to help any one person too much. That, I suppose, is its downside. It does, however, still give me the chance to go to court and rant a bit, and I get to know people whose backgrounds and experiences are quite different from mine. I get to be a part of the transition process, answering all those questions that people think are really inane and in actuality are quite helpful, and I get to go home at the end of the day feeling like I contributed something. I’ve had a very global experience to boot, so I am more than willing to foster travel and time abroad.

So the JD/LLM. Joint degree programs in law schools are a great way to not only combine interests, but also direct your law experience toward a certain career. To recap, the JD is the actual law degree (a juris doctorate,) while the LLM is a masters-level degree in law. It doesn’t lead to a bar exam, but it does allow you to study the laws of some other country. So, in being an immigration lawyer with a JD/LLM I’ll be well versed in American immigration law and hopefully the legal system of another place so I can specialize. It just made sense for me. And hopefully that’s why I’ll make a lot of my law school decisions: because they make sense.