Hello, folks. I would like to know what do you think about the following doubt which is starting to plague me.

I'm a (30 years old) fresh law graduate, with no good marks but nice and strong working background. At least, I think so. I started my own business 5 years ago and I'm actually running it with reasonable success. That means I'm not listed in Forbes but I can pay my bills and make a living. In brief, I have almost 10 years of working experience within the IP/Entertainment field and I was planning to apply to some of those British unis offering cool IP LLMs.

Last week, and without any specific reason, I started to think that US unis would be more given to accept applicants with my profile than UK unis.

It may be a passing nonsense but, I thought I should open this thread and see if anyone can give her/his point or personal experince on this.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

I'd be interested in hearing about this too...if anyone has any idea?

I'll speak from my experience with the University of Edinburgh School of Law LL.M programme. That's quite a tight frame of reference, but I'd not want to speak for other Universities without being sure of their policies, which I'm not ;-).

You say that you have an undergraduate law degree? If it's from a recognised HE institution and you've received an upper second or first class honours and English is your first language, you have met the requirements and you should consider making an application. I can't guarantee acceptance, but on paper you'd have the basics covered.

If English is not your primary language, you may have to meet conditions of language requirement too (IELTS or similar).

If you have received a lower classification in your undergraduate degree, this is where your work experience *may* come in to consideration directly. Although the LL.M is a demanding programme, requiring a lot of research, discussion, debate, learning and writing, your background in an IP field may give you an edge to bring your undergraduate degree 'up'. There are limits to how much weight your experience will carry against a low LL.B score for entry to LL.M, but it gives you a better chance!

Take a step forward and assume you have been offered a place. You work experience now counts for a great deal, particularly in terms of what you have to offer to the learning community that is your class and your experiences will be a huge bonus to your studies. You can relate to the topic of the classes with real life experience and add to the character and flavour of the seminars for your and your peers. Classes will definitely become more enjoyable when you can see an immediate application for your learning in the commercial sector you came from.

So that gives you an idea from one UK uni.

I doubt that US universities take vocational experience into account during application processing any more or less that UK unis do, but I'd be interested to hear from other people on this subject to confirm, or otherwise.

Milller, thanks for your contribution. It's highly appreciated!

Several classmates and even one lecturer told me that US unis may have a tendency to assess applicant's working experience (as artist, manager, agent, etc.) more than the UK unis when you were applying to postgraduate courses such an IP/Entertainment LLM.

This lecturer also holds an LLM from Harvard so, I think his opinion deserves some credit on this but I'm not sure at all if the difference is so big to make me change my "application strategy" and focus it more on the US instead of the UK.

It would be interesting to hear any other opinions from you out there. Come on, lads! ;) Thaaaaaaaaanks in advance!

I imagine it depends on what exactly you mean by "no good marks". If you graduated bottom of your class and just about scraped by the whole way then questions such as would you really be able for academic law at a more difficult level or even what would you give back long term to the legal profession that would justify picking you as opposed to another arguably more academic candidate. On the other hand if what you meant was you graduated somewhere in the middle third of your class, your marks were fine if not fantastic etc then there are UK universities worth applying to. I know people who got into Edinburgh, UCL and KCL on not fantastic results. You probably wouldn't get the top-tier colleges but then if you're looking specifically at IP you may not want them. Having said all that I personally felt that Cambridge did weigh up some factors other than my academics as I got an offer quite early but I was probably still within (if at the lower end of) thhe results that they offer to.