I have just finished my third year of law studies at the University of Oslo. The Norwegian law program is built up as a five year masters degree, with no bachelor being rewarded after three years. The master is so to speak not optional. It is however possible, to do an LLM in another university, and count this as your fifth year of the regular master, albeit not many students actually do this.

Some of the problem I guess comes when we formally have no Bachelor/BA/JD to apply on the basis of. I know that the faculty rutinely issues letters to foreign universitys, explaining the Norwegian system, and that the first three years in fact is equivalent to a Bachelor/BA/JD. I also know that many universitys around the world have accepted this, including Edinburg and Kings.

While starting my forth year (finishing may next year), I now plan to apply to a number of schools in both UK and the US. I also wish to try my luck with some of the very top institutions , such as Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford, among others. I am however afraid that my lack of that formal first degree, explained above, will be a problem. I figure that when having enough capable applicants to fill up the places many times fold, why bother with someone that has to explain his lack in formalities.

I understand that every application is reviewed individually, but the problem remains. I wounder of some of you more experienced llm-guiders have some thoughts on this? How bad is it? ;)

Best reguards, ThirdParty

You should ask hannenyh (http://www.llm-guide.com/about/hannenyh) about this.