Hi everyone,

Hope you are all well!!


I am not certain that applying SJD program is my priority during the LLM. But I can say that it is one of my options.


According to law schools' webpages, SJD is highly selective. In other words, I will not get admission easily due to the fact that only 3~10 students per a school are allowed to enroll it.

Most of schools give strong preference to their graduates or block other schools' student...For example, Harvard, Yale Chicago...a bit low-ranked schools(USNEWS ranking from 20 to 50) also have similar bar policy.

If you have tried to apply or enrolled in SJD program, I would like to ask what factors are important to enroll SJD?

1) Letters of recommendation?
2) Very high GPA from one's LLM program
3) SJD dissertation proposal with some research
4) Personal Statement(SOP) with my willingness to study
5) Anything else such as enough money to stay 5 years or so.

What do you think?

It is okay to tell me your opinion or experiences from your friends. SJD information is always in short even googling does not help much.