Would anyone please provide the ranking for LLMs with specialization in bankruptcy law field, thx. If no ranking is available, would anyone please advise the names of schools with expertise in such a field? Regards,

Here are the official rankings for LLM programs specicalized in Bankruptcy Law in the US:

1. St. John's University
---End of ranking---

That was an easy one ;-)

If you happen to know about any specialized Bankruptcy LLM other than the one at St. John's, please let me know and I will renounce the above ranking.

Courses at St. John's are taught by Professor Zinman and Professor G. Ray Warner, both of whom are well-known experts in this field:

http://new.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/law/faculty/profiles/Zinman
http://new.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/law/faculty/profiles/Warner

UCLA has some courses in bankrupcty (Professor Bussel, Professor Klee, Professor LoPucki) within its general LLM.

Does anyone know what the size of the LLM entering class? What are the job prospects for graduates of the program? Do they improve with the LLM?

St. John's Bankruptcy LLM typically has 12 - 15 students full time and a few more doing it part time. Classes do include JD students as well and can range in size from 4 or 5 up to 30 - 35 for a particular class, although my experience has been around 15 - 20 students. I know in the past few years placement out of the program has been execellent, with 100% of the the class going to either top 100 law firms or federal bankruptcy clerkships. I have taken several LLM classes taught by Warner and Zinnman (who are among the best professors I've had in law school) and also with several Federal Bankruptcy Court Judges from the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. My understanding is that your job prospects definitely improve with receiving an LLM (for example at St. John's top NYC firms typically interview the top 10-15% of the class, whereas with an LLM firms will go for students in the top third of the class).

Think2twice,

Thank you for your help. I am in the program now and enjoying it tremendously. I'm crossing my fingers that placement is like you say it is.

As of Fall 2009 Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego will offer the first all-online LL.M. program in bankruptcy, as a new concentration within its fully-accredited LL.M. in International Tax and Financial Services offered through the Diamond Graduate Program. The Diamond Graduate Program, named for Walter and Dorothy Diamond, was founded in 1998 at St. Thomas University in Miami and was the nation's first fully-interactive online LL.M. program. Thomas Jefferson succeeded St. Thomas as home of the Diamond Graduate Program in 2007. Students can enroll on a part-time or full-time basis; most students in the LL.M. program study part-time while pursuing their legal careers. A J.S.M. degree is also available for students who have not attended law school; it is not suitable for people wishing to take the Bar examination, but is aimed at accountants, insolvency professionals, bankers and others seeking training in the legal aspects of bankruptcy and financial services. Interested persons should contact Hester Ros, (619) 374-6953.

I heard that CLS also had good courses in bankruptcy...

Columbia, NYU and Chicago have the best bankruptcy professors in the U.S., respectively
Columbia (Morrison and Miller)
NYU (Adler and Epstein)
Chicago (Baird)

Also UPenn has a great scholar (Skeel) but he is very young.
Mark Roe who teaches at HLS is kind of disappointing and certainly below the abovementioned ones.
While Cole at SLS is good but not exceptional.

If you are interested in bankruptcy go to one of the abovementioned schools not to UCLA, or the others mentioned in the previous posts...

IF you want some really specific details PM me

P.

I disagree that any of the above law schools are a better choice if you are seeking a LL.M. and want to specialize in bankruptcy law. First, full disclosure, I have taken classes in the St. John's LL.M. in Bankruptcy program. Second, if we were talking about getting a J.D., any of these schools would be a much better choice than St. John's for employability after graduation (and even with a full scholarship I would be hard pressed to recommend getting a J.D. from St. John's over any of these schools). Third, choosing to go to a particular law school based on one professor who teaches one or two classes you will take at most seems like a very poor way to make a decision.

The difference between the LL.M. programs at NYU, Columbia, Chicago,UPenn, HLS and Stanford and the LL.M. program at St. John's is the one at St. John's focuses on bankruptcy law while the others do not. Additionally, the other schools do not necessarily offer a LL.M. that would allow you to take all of the bankruptcy courses as part of an LL.M. program or offer a LL.M. degree that would let employers know that you intended to specialize in bankruptcy law.

That being said, many people are name whores and I really cannot perdict how an LL.M. from any of these top law schools would compare to a St. John's LL.M. outside of the NYC market. In my opinion you will get a better education in bankruptcy law at St. John's because all you take is bankruptcy classes and you have to write a thesis on a bankruptcy law topic. St. John's will also make you competative at big law firms in NYC.

St. John's LL.M. in Bankruptcy grads do very well in the NYC big firm market and clerk for top bankruptcy judges in the country. I am not sure how well St. John's is received outside of NYC, although I know two of my former classmates (one in Houston and one Phoenix) who both work at large national law firms.

St. John's LL.M. in Bankruptcy offers 34 bankruptcy classes. Many of these classes are taught by Federal Bankruptcy Judges from the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the District of Delaware. Other classes are taught by partners at top NYC law firms.

In comparison (I may have missed a couple classes here and there but St. John's clearly offers far more bankruptcy classes than any other law school):

UCLA (where it is possible to get an LL.M. in Business Law with a specialization in Bankruptcy without actually taking a bankruptcy course) offers 7 bankruptcy classes: Bankruptcy, Business Bankruptcy, Creditors' Rights and Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy Transactional Course: Negotiating and Confirming Chapter 11 Plans, Bankruptcy Policy, Bankruptcy and Commercial Law Empiricism, Corporate Reorganization under Chapter 11

NYU offers 6 bankruptcy related classes (which includes the basic introduction to bankruptcy): Bankruptcy Tax, Bankruptcy Litigation Seminar, Introduction to Corporate Reorganization under the Bankruptcy Code, Bankrupcy, Bankruptcy Reorganizations: Case Administration Seminar, and International Bankruptcy Directed Research.

Columbia offers 3 bankruptcy classes (which includes the basic introduction to bankruptcy): Bankruptcy Law, Corporate Reorganization and Bankruptcy, and International Bankruptcy.

Chicago offers 2 bankruptcy classes: Bankruptcy and Reorganization: the Federal Bankruptcy Code, and Distressed Investing and Bankruptcy Litigation.

UPenn offers 4 bankruptcy classes: Chapter 11: Corporate Reorganization, International Bankruptcy, Advanced Issues in Private Finance and Corporate Reorganization, Commercial Credit II

Within the bankruptcy world St. John's LLM program is regarded as the best, and bankruptcy practitioners know this. Ray Warner is an outstanding BK expert and runs a great program.

That said, I want to add a word about our online LLM program in Financial Services with a Concentration in Bankruptcy and Restructuring at Thomas Jefferson, which is the first and only online LLM program in BK. We do not try to be St. John's; rather, our program is aimed at working professionals who can't afford the time and expense of spending a year of full-time study in New York but want a thorough education in BK. We offer 3-credit courses in Consumer BK, Business BK, BK Procedure, BK Tax, Accounting and Financial Reporting (taught by Grant Newton, who wrote the leading books on the subject), International & Comparative BK, and other related areas including a course called Loan Workouts, Debt Collection and Foreclosure which I teach, and which has no counterpart at St. John's. St. John's has far more courses - actually, it has 18 specifically BK courses, not 46 - but most are one or two credit courses. For instance, our International and Comparative BK course, which will be taught by a South African judge who helped write the UNCITRAL Model Law, includes both comparative BK (one credit at St. John's) and multi-national BK (two credits at St. John's). Our faculty is highly qualified. I invite you to view our program and faculty description at http://tjsl.edu/llm-bankruptcy-law.
Arnold Rosenberg, Assistant Dean, Thomas Jefferson School of Law