Hi Agustin,

Thank you for taking the time and explaining about the type of courses and professors at Chicago Law! As a competition law practitioner in India, I have had to research on several issues on market structure and conduct of players for some of the cartel cases I've worked on. It would be a dream come true if Judge Posner takes a few classes! I have received an acceptance decision from Chicago Law and have a couple of questions as I have also been accepted to Columbia and UPenn.

1. Financial assistance - How difficult is it to obtain assistance from Chicago? I will not be able to attend in the absence of any funding or fee waiver.

2. I have heard that the LLM at Chicago is extremely intense and competitive - could you please let me know how many hours of study there would be each week?

3. In terms of diversity, given the smaller size of the class, I assume it must be very difficult for the Law School to make decisions - I was wondering if there are any Indians in the LL.M class or at the Law School? It would be great if I could get in touch with someone who has already completed the LL.M course at Chicago law and is currently in India.

4. Weather - I know that it gets really cold in Chicago and as someone coming from a tropical climate, I'm wondering if I can cope up in the winter months.

5. Career - Do you think studying in NYC or closer would give a better advantage in terms of career options after the LL.M course? I am interested in getting into academics and want to teach competition law in India, but it would be great if I could get in opportunity to work as a research assistant or with a think-tank for a while. Not sure if the LL.M could provide such an opportunity.

Would be great if we could discuss the above. Thank you for your time everyone!

Sangeetha

Dear Sangeetha, congrats on your admission! To make it easier for everybody, I will divide my answers as you have with your questions.

1) Financial Assistance.
Yes there is financial assistance and I know cases for a fact. I cannot tell you what are the chances, the average tuition waiver, or the number of tuition waivers, because I don't have the data. But assistance has been provided in many warranted cases that I know.

2) Intensity/Workload: I am not gonna kid you. When you chat with friends attending other schools you realize that we study a little bit more than they do, and there are a couple of reasons for it. We have 3 quarters and that means that you have at least 9 courses for each year, with most of us taking more than 3 on average for each quarter given the amazing course offering. You are here for just one year and you want to make the best of it. The fact is that professors tend to believe that time is an elastic notion, and they give you the same material other schools cover in a semester. But the flip side to that coin is that you get to take more classes, you get to interact with more students and faculty, and you end up organizing yourself to profit from the very active social life of the median LLM here. You have lots of things to do here (concerts, theater, get-togethers, clubbing, dinning, etc) and you can perfectly keep up the pace with the readings and enjoy all those things at the same time. Normally, people get to the law school library around 9/10 and leave by 5/6 and you are perfectly fine with that. No need for heroics.
Also, bear in mind that we are graded in the same curve that JDs are. That means that you need to compete with local students for the grades in the right tale of the distribution. Although that can make it a little bit harder (they are really concentrated on getting the best grades because their jobs depend on it), the fact that you get additional time for each exam to account for our language barrier, and that we are already lawyers when we come, levels the field. You can get perfectly good grades. Lastly, precisely because you have a curve, monumentally failing a class really difficult, because if the questions are too hard, the same will happen to everybody and the curve will balance things off.
Bottom line, you are going to study a little more, but it will be to your benefit both in terms of knowledge and the opportunity to get to know more people, professors and ways of teaching.

3. Diversity: precisely because there is a lot of demand for top 5 schools, the Law School can put together a sufficiently diverse group of people each year. I had classmates from India, Pakistan, Israel, Mongolia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, Taiwan, Israel, Belgium, Netherlands, England, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Italy, Germany, France, Denmark, Luxembourg, Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina. Believe me, you will have a very diverse group of people.
If you want me to contact you with people from India at the Law School (currently 3), send me a PM with your contact info and I will do the magic.

4. Weather: ok, I am not going to tell you that Chicago is Miami, cause it's not. Winter here can get (for just a couple of days every winter) as close as you will ever be to becoming a member of the Night's Watch in the Game of Thrones. But that is part of the experience, and we have people from Brazil, Saudi Arabia and, yes, India, every year, and they've all survived. It is really just a couple of days of really extreme weather, and everything is solved by staying indoors at the School or your apartment. Transportation is not affected by cold temperatures, and downtown even has a pedway running underneath the city if you want to avoid cold temperatures. The truth is that you will adjust to it, it is only from late december through mid February, and you will enjoy the snow, and the very fact that you get to ice skate in front of the law school, or go skiing less than two hours drive from here.
Also, and I am telling you this as a persona that lived in NYC and spent some time in Boston, when you are below 0 celsius, cold is cold everywhere, and things like humidity make the difference. Lucky for us, Chicago does well there, and the colder days here usually come with clear skies.
Last but not least: don't forget about the most amazing fall and spring times you will ever have in your life. The trees, tulips everywhere, and people flooding the streets are the flip side to Chicago's winter. Just check Lolapalooza Rock Festival in the fall, or search for photos of the spring time in Chicago. For those of you staying for the bar exam during the summer, the beach is also amazing.
Bottom line, you will laugh at the weather and the winter will be part of the badges you will take home with you after graduation.

5. Jobs: I should divide my answer into Big Firms opportunities and Academia.
Big Firms: as part of the UChicago crew, we get to go to the "elite" Job Fair for top 5 schools, that is a great environment to interview for jobs. While the NYU Job Fair is kind of a Speed Dating scenario, with a whistle signaling that you have to end your interview and leave the chair free for the next person in an open space with tables for each firm, our Job Fair takes place at a hotel where every firm has a suite and you can have a normal setting for an interview. The fact that the program is small means that you won't have a ton of other people coming from the exact same law school, as it will happen to people coming from bigger programs. And firms are prone to diversifying their bets. When I joined Skadden there were incoming LLMs from all top 5 schools but for Yale.
Academia: I guess that your best shot at getting a research assistant position is at the law school you attend as an LLM. Professors need to get to know you to give you the position, and that usually comes with class participation and performance, but if you already have a contact at Columbia things may be different. Perhaps it's better if you shoot me a PM with a little bit of additional information on your intentions so I can be of better assistance.
I hope this is useful.
Best,
Agustin

Also got in. Recived the e-mail on the 7th.

Agustin, thank you so much for sharing your first-hand insights on this and they are very helpful. I would be much thankful if you can shed some light on the following:

1) As you mentioned, U-Chicago LL.M. has three academic semesters, as opposed to 2 at most schools including Columbia. Since this three-semester system would likely to postpone the time of graduation, I am wondering if this would somehow affect NY bar prep?

2) My area of interests lies in corporate/transactional law ( M&As, etc.). For this particular area of law, which law school do you think has the edge - Chicago or Columbia? (U-Chicago definitively is THE school for Law & Econ and perhaps Anti-trust, but some people claim Columbia is very strong in business transactional law)

3) Could you please probably share some of your personal experience on living in Chicago - among others, what is typical rental payment for school sponsored housing/apartments nearby, dining options, LL.M.'s involvement with rest of the University, convenience in travelling to downtown Chicago, and so on.

4) If possible, could you please share some data on job prospects of recent Chicago ll.m. graduates (what is the estimated % of grads who actually secured jobs at Biglaw/Academia in the States among those with such intention)?

Thanks again for your input!

Thanks alonglastmoment, I had exactly the same questions.

Glad to help, guys!

1) Yo do have more classes at UChicag because you will start at some point in September with orientation and then classes and will finish exams of the third term by the beginning of June, which is only a couple of weeks later than other schools. But do note that bar preparation here starts after Chicago finishes with classes, so the difference in time will have no actual impact for you. Perhaps the difference is that you will not get as long a vacation time after finishing the last round of exams as other schools may have, but the fact remains that the passage rate of the bar exam at UChicago is insanely high, so there is empirical evidence that you should not be too worried about this!

2) There are a lot of courses on corporate/transactional courses at UChicago, from business organizations and the transactional clinic, to project finance structuring, accounting for lawyers, and negotiation. Professors like Fischel, Baird, Eric Posner, Omri Ben-Shahar are teaching courses on core issues like contracts, or corporate governance that you will definitely enjoy if you come. Also, there are several partners from big firms teaching practical courses. So you should be ok if that is what you are interested in. That said, I believe that for those that have the intention of sitting for the NY bar, there are a number of required courses and that applies to all universities. Those requirements were overhauled by the NY Bar last year, and that means that you have a basic set of courses (some of which are instrumental, like legal writing, and others are substantive) that you need to take. Then you will have a little less room to maneuver that what used to be the case when I did my LLM. We had almost complete freedom to chose courses and still be able to sit for the bar. What I am saying is that with the number of interesting courses here for practitioners, you will have a (nice) hard time deciding which ones to take.
Personally, I think you should think of the LLM as a perfect opportunity to bring new frameworks to your country when you graduate. Taking Law & Econ is ALSO about becoming a better corporate lawyer, because you will have an edge on approaching legal issues that other colleagues won't have. And believe me, that even applies for Con Law or Investment Arbitration (my field), where the tools of Economic Analysis of Law gave me a lot of advantages to better grasp the nuances of a case, the incentives at play, the boundaries of the negotiating standpoints of two parties in a settlement agreement, to name just a few. What I am trying to say here is this: Do not think of the LLM as an option between training for work and the theoretical tools. Come here and get a little bit of both and you will be maximizing the return on your time, money and effort invested on the LLM!

3) I am paying $ 1145 (utilities, basic cable TV, internet and gym) for a big (65 sq. meters) 1-BR apartment with a lake view at Regents Apartments. It is the building where most of the LLMs and first year students live. It is not a luxurious apartment, but it is in Hyde Park close to the campus, you have several buses/shuttles that will take you to the school for free, and you have both the metra and bus No. 6 to get downtown. There are also good and reasonably priced options downtown. I believe Dean Badger will circulate a memo with housing options for all those admitted and it is really helpful to start analyzing the options you have. Living here in Chicago is way cheaper than NYC. I moved from NYC to Chicago this year and I am spending one third of the money both because of real estate and living expenses factors. Traveling downtown from Hyde Park takes 15 minutes either by metra (urban train) or bus, and the fare is 2.25. If you want to have interaction with other students I would say that Hyde Park has much more concentration of people, and during the winter a lot of stuff happens in the apartments. That pushed me into deciding for Regents because you can have a great dinner with friends just by taking the elevator (efficient and avoids commuting with cold temperatures). But again, there are really good options downtown and the right choice depends on what your plans and expectations are. If you want to fully enjoy having bars and restaurants every day at a walking distance, living downtown could make perfect sense. If you want a high end apartment with a great view of the river and the lake, and you can pay a little more, you have apartments like Aqua that are simply breathtaking. It all depends on your plans and possibilities.

4) I would say that most of the people trying to get a job after the LLM got it. Europeans get lots of offers from the European branches of big firms, Latin Americans tend to do very well in landing jobs in NYC, there are usually good opportunities for people interested in arbitration either in DC or NYC, and the job fair proved to be very efficient in matching needs with willingness. This year the call-backs are still coming in so I cannot give you an assessment or ratio, but if I consider my LLM year, I can only think of 1 or 2 cases of people trying to get positions here that were not able to get them. Needless to say, factors like your personal background and/or the involvement of your current firm in trying to secure a job for you (the usual case with LLMs coming from Latin America) are important. And as I said yesterday, do not forget a basic thing: here at Chicago you will be a group of 65 people, many of which are not going to be looking for a job in big firms (some are interested in academia, they need to go back to their countries right away, they already have an offer, etc). So there will be roughly 25 or so Uchicagoans looking for a position, while NYU and Columbia will bring hundreds to the pot. If they firms are interested in diversifying their bets by taking people from different universities, as is the case, you have a better probability of landing a job to begin with. But again: jobs are not secured before hand and obviously nationality may be an important factor, because US firms hire LLMs to strengthen their relation with certain legal markets they see as attractive.

I hope these answers are useful for your decision-making process.

Best,

Agustin

Thank you very much Agustin.
I have a question regarding the JSD program at Chicago. Is it normally considered to be very difficult to enter the JSD program at Chicago after LLM? Would some JSD students be placed within Chicago for research / teaching positions?

Thank you very much in advance.

Best,
Kim

Hi Kim. I would say that it is not that easy to get the admission, but not because the School makes it particularly difficult in terms of formal requirements (the grades you need as pre-requisite are doable) but because many people that arrive with the idea of applying either find themselves without a clearly defined dissertation topic/proposal, or even if they have the idea, they find themselves with lots of interesting things to do during the LLM and decide to postpone the effort of putting together the dissertation proposal. Naturally, some people also abandon the idea because grades are not that great.
So, I think potential candidates eliminate themselves before even applying, and then the application / admission process if pretty straightforward.
You need to have reasonably good grades, a dissertation topic that is well defined and interesting for the faculty, and two professors that, based on your topic and performance, are willing to become your supervisors.
I think the Law School usually admits 3 people or so per year, and for the last couple of years that included a candidate from another school (Harvard, Columbia).
You get full tuition waiver for the JSD and you can get a fellowship that will cover basic living expenses.
I hope this helps and please do not hesitate to send my a PM if you need to discuss this further.
Best,
Agustin

Thank you very much. It helped me enormously to understand my options. It would be a fascinating experience to study at Chicago. Thank you again!

Hi, Agustin. Thanks so much for the generous sharing of your insights on Chicago! I'm from China and I have also received the admission from Chicago Law. Do you happen to know whether any Chinese LL.M graduates from Chicago Law have landed jobs with Big Firms in NYC or Chicago in the past couple of years? Thanks! Wallace

Hi Wallace. Happy to help.
Look, I cannot speak to what will happen this year because the process is absolutely ongoing with call backs coming these weeks. But I do remember that two of my fellow Chinese LLM landed jobs in the U.S. the year I did my LLM (2012).
Please bear in mind that for 1-year positions, the role of the firm you are working for tends to be crucial, because American big firms see the job offering as a means to bond or strengthen relations with firms in countries where they believe they will have businesses going in the following years. Therefore, if you are already working for a firm in China, you should start pushing them so they can negotiate a 1-year position for you. Note that in the 1-year positions universe, Spanish speaking attorneys have an advantage vis-à-vis everybody else these years, given the volume of work with the region, so you need to move fast to improve your chances.
I hope this information helps.
Best.
Agustin

Agustin, thanks so much for your thorough response! This is very helpful to me. All the best, Wallace

Hi,

Has anyone heard from Dean Badger about financial aid?

Hi,

Has anyone heard from Dean Badger about financial aid?

Dean Badger's email does say "around 15 March". Probably this means that it might be 1 to 2 (business) days as of 15 March (even though I really hope to hear soonest).

Hope the best for all of us.

Cheers

I did receive a financial aid offer on the 15th.
Maybe they are sending it out in turns.

Best,