Has enyone attended the MLLP "Deutsches und Europäisches Recht und Rechtspraxis"? Any experience to be shared? Would you recommend it?
Deutsches und Europäisches Recht und Rechtspraxis
Posted Feb 03, 2016 10:56
Posted Mar 02, 2016 23:04
I'm also interested and curious here. Anyone who has attended and has experiences about the LLM programas at Humboldt Universitaet Berlin (HU) to share? =)
Posted Nov 23, 2023 15:29
I have just finished this LL.M. programme during the academic year 2022-2023, I am sharing my feedback here if it can be useful to anyone.
Overall: I am very happy with this LL.M. programme, which was very interesting and rewarding. I would make the same choice without hesitation if I had to choose again.
My background / motivation for an LL.M. in Berlin: I studied and passed the bar in Switzerland (non-German speaking). I wanted to do an LL.M. but it didn't seem ideal to go to the USA or the UK. I already use English in my work and private life, and although I can always improve it, it was more important for me to improve my German. I'm particularly interested in private law and given the proximity between Swiss and German law, I wanted to study German law of obligations and contracts. What's more, living in Berlin for a year really appealed to me, not to mention the fact that tuition fees are much lower than in the USA or the UK.
Application/arrival: after the application deadline in May, I was accepted at the end of July. From there, I completed the necessary formalities (health insurance, etc) and found accommodation in Berlin in September so that I could start studying in mid-October. The academic calendar is different from Switzerland in any case: winter semester from mid-October to early February, exams, spring semester from mid-April to mid-July. There isn't necessarily very proactive information from the faculty's international programmes office: we were informed quite late that there would be an information session for our LL.M. (the information session was useful and clear though), so I was a bit confused about the first few days. During this session I got to know the other participants, there were a dozen of us from quite different countries (very nice team), we created a WhatsApp group to keep in touch during the year.
Courses/exams: in practice, the first semester is mainly devoted to courses and exams, and the second to the master's dissertation. For the main classes (civil/public/criminal law), it is strongly recommended to choose the two mandatory blocks in the first semester and to do them in parallel, as otherwise the course material accumulates and instead of doing an exam in February on one semester, you have to do an exam in July on the material of two semesters.
The courses are very good and taught by renowned professors. The core courses (civil/public/criminal law) are the first-year courses for students in the faculty, giving an excellent ground knowledge in these areas of German law. The range of Master's courses is very extensive, and here again, there are some fascinating courses on offer.
You should be aware that, despite what the LL.M. rules say, the choices you can make are limited by class timetables. For example, in our case, it wasn't possible to take civil law and criminal law at the same time, as the classes overlapped. So I opted for Civil Law and Public Law. If you have already taken courses corresponding to certain branches in your country of origin, you can apply for an exemption at the beginning of the semester (several have applied for this and it has been accepted).
In the oral exams (for the master's classes), the teachers were rather generous in their grading (easily 14-16 out of 18, having revised well of course) - I've heard that they're quite strict with German students, perhaps there's a difference because we were doing an LL.M. As far as the written exams (core branches) are concerned, they're the same as the first-year exams (solving a case in 3 hours) and the marking seemed to me to be more in line with the standard of German students (6/18 in public law, 9/18 in methodology, 14/18 in civil law, but that's my area of specialization). One of the modules is either a practical internship or additional classes. I chose the additional classes and did half of them, with the module's oral exam, in the winter semester, and the other two remaining classes of the module in the spring semester (attendance only, no exam).
I did my seminar in the 2nd semester in parallel with the master's dissertation. The master's thesis was very interesting and fun to write, and the faculty library is practical and pleasant. All students have to find a teacher and a subject in order to register at the beginning of February, and there's a 16-week deadline from then on to submit the paper. In reality, this timetable isn't very well thought out: the whole month of February is devoted to exams, and I still had my seminar to do in March, so I could really start at the beginning of April. But 2 months was enough time to finish my paper.
Once the dissertation was submitted at the beginning of June, it took a long time to be corrected by the two experts. In the end, I didn't do my oral defense until the end of October, and graduated in mid-November. As far as I know, all the students in our cohort passed.
The university is very well located, in superb historic buildings, and life in Berlin is simply great. Note that German is spoken as much as English on a daily basis in Berlin, so if you want to be completely immersed in German, it's better to choose a smaller city.
[Edited by 22berlin23 on Nov 30, 2023]
Overall: I am very happy with this LL.M. programme, which was very interesting and rewarding. I would make the same choice without hesitation if I had to choose again.
My background / motivation for an LL.M. in Berlin: I studied and passed the bar in Switzerland (non-German speaking). I wanted to do an LL.M. but it didn't seem ideal to go to the USA or the UK. I already use English in my work and private life, and although I can always improve it, it was more important for me to improve my German. I'm particularly interested in private law and given the proximity between Swiss and German law, I wanted to study German law of obligations and contracts. What's more, living in Berlin for a year really appealed to me, not to mention the fact that tuition fees are much lower than in the USA or the UK.
Application/arrival: after the application deadline in May, I was accepted at the end of July. From there, I completed the necessary formalities (health insurance, etc) and found accommodation in Berlin in September so that I could start studying in mid-October. The academic calendar is different from Switzerland in any case: winter semester from mid-October to early February, exams, spring semester from mid-April to mid-July. There isn't necessarily very proactive information from the faculty's international programmes office: we were informed quite late that there would be an information session for our LL.M. (the information session was useful and clear though), so I was a bit confused about the first few days. During this session I got to know the other participants, there were a dozen of us from quite different countries (very nice team), we created a WhatsApp group to keep in touch during the year.
Courses/exams: in practice, the first semester is mainly devoted to courses and exams, and the second to the master's dissertation. For the main classes (civil/public/criminal law), it is strongly recommended to choose the two mandatory blocks in the first semester and to do them in parallel, as otherwise the course material accumulates and instead of doing an exam in February on one semester, you have to do an exam in July on the material of two semesters.
The courses are very good and taught by renowned professors. The core courses (civil/public/criminal law) are the first-year courses for students in the faculty, giving an excellent ground knowledge in these areas of German law. The range of Master's courses is very extensive, and here again, there are some fascinating courses on offer.
You should be aware that, despite what the LL.M. rules say, the choices you can make are limited by class timetables. For example, in our case, it wasn't possible to take civil law and criminal law at the same time, as the classes overlapped. So I opted for Civil Law and Public Law. If you have already taken courses corresponding to certain branches in your country of origin, you can apply for an exemption at the beginning of the semester (several have applied for this and it has been accepted).
In the oral exams (for the master's classes), the teachers were rather generous in their grading (easily 14-16 out of 18, having revised well of course) - I've heard that they're quite strict with German students, perhaps there's a difference because we were doing an LL.M. As far as the written exams (core branches) are concerned, they're the same as the first-year exams (solving a case in 3 hours) and the marking seemed to me to be more in line with the standard of German students (6/18 in public law, 9/18 in methodology, 14/18 in civil law, but that's my area of specialization). One of the modules is either a practical internship or additional classes. I chose the additional classes and did half of them, with the module's oral exam, in the winter semester, and the other two remaining classes of the module in the spring semester (attendance only, no exam).
I did my seminar in the 2nd semester in parallel with the master's dissertation. The master's thesis was very interesting and fun to write, and the faculty library is practical and pleasant. All students have to find a teacher and a subject in order to register at the beginning of February, and there's a 16-week deadline from then on to submit the paper. In reality, this timetable isn't very well thought out: the whole month of February is devoted to exams, and I still had my seminar to do in March, so I could really start at the beginning of April. But 2 months was enough time to finish my paper.
Once the dissertation was submitted at the beginning of June, it took a long time to be corrected by the two experts. In the end, I didn't do my oral defense until the end of October, and graduated in mid-November. As far as I know, all the students in our cohort passed.
The university is very well located, in superb historic buildings, and life in Berlin is simply great. Note that German is spoken as much as English on a daily basis in Berlin, so if you want to be completely immersed in German, it's better to choose a smaller city.
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