Hello, my name is Guilherme, I'm 20 years old and I'm from Brazil.
It is 5:21 AM and I decided to plan what to do with my life.
I'm currently studying Law - LL.B (6th semester) and International Relations - B.A (1st semester). Here in Brazil it takes 5 years to graduate in Law and International Relations takes 4. If I did the math correctly, I'll graduate in Law in December of 2018 and in International Relations in July of 2020 (1 year and a half later).
I'm pursuing a career on the International Law area, but I'm not sure what I specifically want to work with yet. I love everything about the field (maybe because this is the subject that my father teaches at university and we are very alike).
I worked 2 years in a law firm with Private Law, Labour Law and Social Security Law before starting my International Relations B.A in July, due to my interests in international matters.
As I have full scholarship in Law (LL.B), it is not a problem having both courses at the same time and I have a lot of free time to attend to the classes in the morning/night and all the afternoon available to study.
It seems that an LL.M program in International Law would fit me well (I wouldn't be here if I didn't but feel free to tell me I'm wrong), so I have a few questions:

1) Should I take any kind of specialization program on the International Law area before applying to an LL.M on this 1 year and half gap that I have between graduating in law and IR? I plan to open a Law office with a friend after graduating just to get more practice and money while I don't finish IR, something completly temporary. I'll have a lot of free time to get a "post-graduation"/specialization degree here, that usually takes about 1 year and a half (360 hours).
2) Do LL.M programs in United Kingdom/Canada/Australia are as important/influent in a CV as programs in the USA? (some courses in UK are 3 times cheaper, as far as I researched)
3) I've become really interested on the programs of Kent University, Canterbury/Brussels in International Law. Have you guys ever heard about this specific university or would you recommend me applying to another one?

Thank you in advance for helping me. Feel free to share any kind of knowledge in the matter, I really appreciate any tips because I'm completly blind here.

[Edited by Gu1 on Sep 26, 2016]

Hi,

Are you considering Public International Law or other branches?

I believe PIL would offer you a general view of different fields at the same time, so that might be a good option if you do not know what to do after you graduate. Also, I don't know how it is in Brazil, but maybe your law firm could advise or represent your government or other governments in matters of international law?

One thing that would certainly be useful for you is something like international economic law and/or international settlement disputes, international arbitration etc. This is just an idea because this is a very common field in international law (States/investors etc). But if you do not have an interest in it, then I do not recommend it unless you want to do it anyway (I am not a fan of recommending people to do one thing just because it is trendy or can bring money to you, you need to have a genuine interest about it in my opinion). HOWEVER you also have an IR background, so maybe you are more interested in a more "public" area. In which case I believe you would have a great combination of international law/IR (this is more or less what I am doing).

If you want to focus on PIL, then I can give you some tips (I have a master's degree - basically the equivalent of an LL.M. in Public International and European Law from a French university).

- I STRONGLY recommend NOT to go to a US university to study PIL, or even international law in general. Why? Two reasons: quality -> you can find so much better in Europe (which is THE place to be if you want to study international law); price -> way too expensive for a program which lasts only a year and is far from being as good as the other European programs you may find.

- You don't care whether the LL.M. in PIL or international law is from the US or the UK. What matters is the university and the reputation of the program you attended. But as I just said, I strongly recommend not to go to the US to do that. I am sure there are plenty of British universities which are very good in PIL (you would want to check universities in London such as King's College; also I am not sure but maybe Oxbridge have good programs too - not sure though - again keep it mind that you must not focus on the overall reputation of the university but the reputation of the relevant program, and sometimes other universities have better programs than Oxbridge or the US Ivy Leagues)

- If you absolutely want to go to the US anyway and want to study international law, only go either to NYU or Columbia (the only two worthy US universities in international law - forget about the rest, even Harvard or Yale - that might depend if you want to study business law or other fields though, not so sure about that)

- Again, if you are still into PIL, and before the UK universities, you should check universities in Geneva (either the University of Geneva or, if you have enough money, I strongly recommend the Graduate Institute, which would offer you a great program + the connections from the Geneva world and all of its international organizations etc) or in the Netherlands (Leiden University in particular, which is a great university for international law).

- If you speak French, French universities also offer good programs in international law (in this case, just like in the US, just think of La Sorbonne and Nanterre, forget about the rest - again this is for PIL, not international business law etc), but they are NOT LL.M.s, they are called Master 2 (M2). They are basically the same level of graduate studies, it's just not called an LL.M.

- If you do not speak French or any other European language, then you can just focus on Geneva/the Hague (or maybe Netherlands more generally, don't know how good is the university of Utrecht for example) or the UK. I am not sure if the Belgian programs are in English or French (or both), but I believe Belgium also has some great programs (not so sure though, I don't know them that much). You would want to check Leuven University and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (this one only in French I think though).

Hope this helps. Do not hesitate to ask me any other questions, I'd love to help you!

[Edited by NapZ on Sep 26, 2016]