LL.M. in International Law

The Advanced Master's degree/certificate is another one of those country-specific awards (Propios in Spain, PhDr. in Czechia and Slovakia, Postgraduate Studies DBAs in Poland etc.). That's why you have these interpretive dilemmas. It's not recognized throughout Europe as an official Belgian Master's degree. Nevertheless, it seems to be a respected Belgian postgraduate qualification. Its utility will heavily depend on your location and the likelihood of receiving any recognizable benefit from it. In Poland, the LLM is awarded as a postgraduate qualification, not a degree, so it might have some actual application. Check this out with the help of a translation: https://kandydat.kul.pl/podyplomowe/master-of-laws/. The Polish one costs much less than the Belgian LLM, around 5000 Polish złoty for Poles ($1235 USD/1673 CAD). As a Pole, I would never get the Belgian one, even if I intended to obtain this type of legal qualification. The Belgian award could be treated as equivalent to the Polish one, though not formally. But as a dual-citizen Canadian, I'd be especially careful with it. I have no idea how it would be received by evaluators in the True North. When I got the Spanish propio MBA, I (at least) knew that it would be treated like the Polish postgraduate studies MBA, so it made perfect sense to obtain it, especially with the cost. From my perspective, the country-specific alternative Belgian award is too pricey.

 

Thanks. I think I'm best to go with that.

 

Good. I'm sure you and your mule will do fine.

 

Perhaps there might even be a tractor for you, Comrade, in the next Five Year Plan.

 

Law degrees are funny anyway. Postgraduate "certificates" and certificates of specialization during undergrad law school are pretty common but not of much value here in the U.S. I rather imagine that this PG "Certificate" would do something useful as far as training the practicing lawyer but little or nothing at all toward advancing that lawyer's career. Law is not rocket science! Once you have the basics and are able to apply that knowledge at a professional level, additional education is more "broadening" than "deepening". You CAN learn something useful from an LL.M. in international labor law, say, but you are fully equipped to learn the same stuff from actual practice experience. That's why most American lawyers and judges do not have any degree beyond their undergrad J.D.

 

Back when you could open a law school in California with a few affidavits and declaring some assets, almost every one of the distance learning unaccredited universities operating a law program offered a combined MBA/JD degree.

Also, they typically offered both a 3-year and 4-year JD. The difference was the 4-year program permitted you to sit for the Bar exam.

 

If they'd throw in an M.D. for a bit extra with the MBA/JD, I'd consider it.

Seriously, they could do a LOT of things back then, that they can't do any more. Nowadays, unless a school has religious exemption, it can't even BE unaccredited in California -- and operate, that is.

I wonder, over the years, how many lawyers those schools graduated, who actually went on to at least a moderately successful career in practising law. It strikes me some of the Bar Pass Rates might have been pretty low. @nosborne48 said in another thread tonight that law isn't rocket science. OK - he should know, but it isn't basket-weaving, either... is it? Especially passing the Bar Exam.

 

Dang the timer. There may be a very few outliers, possibly grandfathered somehow. I thought of Buddhist schools, but I'm pretty sure they'd fit under religious-exempt -if required. There were a couple of long-established, fairly big names. And a Graduate-level Psychology school or two that had very good reputations but lacked mainstream accreditation. I don't know how any fared -or didn't, under the new regime in California.

Hopefully, someone here does.

 

Noooo...not basket weaving. Basket weaving requires far more technical knowledge and skill than practicing law does.

The one thing law does require is the ability to think in a highly structured and artificial fashion and to communicate efficiently with other people who also think in this artificial way as well as be able to explain to those who don't or can't. Not everyone can do this. Not even every law student is able to master this rather esoteric skill.

The bizarre thing is, this skill is essential to making a modern legal system function.

 

When you consider the need to pass the Baby Bar after one year of study--and nothing beyond that counts until you do--and the really low pass rates for grads from unaccredited DL schools, the odds of becoming an attorney by that route were close to zero. John Bear once played with the math and said about 1% who started ever made it. It's hard to say; while pass rates for both exams were available by category, and they were split into first time and repeats, it was never clear (a) how many people these schools enrolled and (b) for the people who passed after more than one run at either the Bar or the Baby Bar, how many tries it took.

Because these schools came under the 94301(c) section of the law ("Authorized") instead of 94310(b) ("Approved") or Cal Bar accredited (none were), there was no meaningful assessment of the quality of education being provided. And because they were for-profit and open-admission, they admitted pretty much everyone who could pay. (And they weren't particularly expensive compared to accredited schools.)

It was a mess.

 

Graduates from the few that had Approved PhD and PsyD programs were permitted to sit for the state licensing exam. (Like California Coast.) But the rest offering psychology doctorates--and there were a lot--weren't graduating psychologists. Most were counselors who wanted to use the doctorate to bolster their credentials, but not their licenses. Perhaps that's why I loathe the practice--I think it's highly deceptive to use the PhD or PsyD title when you're a counselor and not a psychiatrist.

It's my memory that most of the Approved schools offering the psychology doctorate went on to regional accreditation. And schools like California Coast who went to DEAC for institutional accreditation dropped their programs. In other words, when CCU was unaccredited, you could go there and become a psychologist. But now that they're accredited, you can't.

 

I'm not an attorney, of course, but I agree with this 100%. There is a way to think about things--how things work--that isn't necessarily intuitive and doesn't comport with everyday logic. It just is.

Back when I was a PMP, we talked all the time about having to know project management "the PMI Way" in order to pass the certification exam. (PMI = Project Management Institute) I don't care how much project management experience you had, if you didn't understand how PMI did it, you simply could not pass. Highly experienced project managers often have to go through quite a bit of "un-learning" in order to learn the PMI Way.

 

Indeed. I just looked up two that came to mind and they are now both RA. Thanks.

 

Studying law by correspondence through a California law school is HARD. We have one or two successful students around here. I congratulate them on their discipline for four long years.

 

I do not know why the "University Certificate" is popular at prestigious schools offering online courses. Why isn't a "Graduate Certificate" normal? Are they trying to avoid going through accreditation approval?

• Dartmouth College's University Certificate in Digital Transformation
• IE Business School's Business Essential University Certificate
• HEC Paris's Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship University Certificate

 

Look at the admission requirements on the Dartmouth cert. and you'll see. It's open to people who might not have the academic background for formal grad. certificate. Potential numbers look good - so offer the program.

Schools have been doing that for years. In fact in the 90s I earned two certificates, (1) Writing and (2) Business from my local uni. No degree or degree enrolment required. If you did enrol for a degree, and had the certs, they were worth credits.

 

A "graduate certificate" is also very likely to require graded work and carry academic credit. A "university certificate" might or might not involve either.

 

True. My two involved both. Graded exams (business cert.), assignments, projects on both --- and if you enrolled for a degree, 24 credits total, IIRC. The certs were really nice. It seems anything with the University logo impressed people. And I was fortunate enough to get some of my writing published in a book from the University Press. Twice. That impressed me!

These things can be good. I learned a lot. They're not a "dodge."

 

Or even a "Chrysler".

 

(Groan...) I was gonna add "DeSoto" - but I thought better of it.