Hey everyone,

I have to choose among College of Europe LLM, Oxford MJur and LSE llm.

I want to practice competition law in Brussels.
I know the College of Europe is very very focussed and specific and gives you the possibility to work in prestigious law firms in Brussels.
The kind of preparation Bruges gives is very technical and very specific for the job you will be doing afterwards.
The subjects you can find in bruges aren't available anywhere else and there is a very specific expertise in every area of eu law.
On the other hand, according to some opinions i've heard, the CoE has maybe lost a bit of its prestige in the last 10 years, but these are just opinions.

Oxford has on its side the worldwide brand name, the academic excellence, and, well, oxford is oxford.
Oxford would also give me the possibility to have direct experience of a Common Law system, and definitely to improve my english almost up to a mothertongue level.
Oxford would also give me a better possibility to move away from brussels if I were to understand it doesn't suit me anymore.
On the other hand oxford seems not to be that well recognised by recruiters in Brussels, especially for competition law, despite the department of competition studies and professor Ezrachi working there.
Finally oxford's LLM has a reputation for being absolutely excellent for academia but a bit less interesting for somone who wants to practice as a lawyer immediately after the masters.

LSE has a very strong brand name as well, but it doesn't have such e great reputation for competition law.

Any opinions on the subject??

Oxford.

Why? Because it's Oxford. CoE and (even more) LSE are surely very, very reputable schools, but only Oxford is a league of its own.

Congratulations btw, great achievement. I cannot imagine anybody having any kind of drawback because he/she went to Oxford. IMHO you would really have to make up your mind only between Oxford and let's say Cambridge, Harvard and the like.

?

Dear Justme,
I can see your dilemma.

It depends fundamentally in what you want to do. If you really want to do competition law I would go for the College of Europe. It provides a good grounding in competition law and a lot of LLM students from there go into the Commission to do a stage afterwards which increase their employability.

However, as one of the other correspondents said, Oxford, is Oxford. So my practical solution is why do you not do both? Go to Bruges first and then Oxford after? I know several partners in Brussels law firms with two LLMs you can maintain the tradition.

Professor Alan Riley
LLM Programme Director
City Law School
City University, London
Electronic Mail: alan.riley.1@city.ac.uk

If you have a chance to study in oxford, do not hesitate any second, I ve studied there for one year, and I wish I could have studied more, yes Oxford is defintily a unique place in this world !

I'm doing MJur at Oxon now. As a graduate student you'll be obliged to take four subjects out of a couple of dozens. There are EU competition and EU business regulation law in the list. Oxford is Oxford. It's a place to be. Never mind. You can practice EU competition law in a City law firm in London. Oxford can make you more competitive worldwide. There was a good proposal to do it first at CoE and then from a bit different prospective at Oxford. There are some people with CoE LLM doing MJur here now.