The philosophy of the LL.M. program in Individualized Legal Studies is to allow each student to build his or her own program to fit the student’s individual career goals and interests. All students must successfully complete 24 hours of law credit drawn from the regular Drake Law School curriculum. A student may design his or her own concentration by devoting 12 of these 24 credit hours to a specialized area of study of the student’s choice, or the student may pursue one of several prescribed areas of concentration, such as Business Law, Human Rights and Global Citizenship, or Sustainable Development.

Students must satisfy a written project requirement, ordinarily in the form of a 35-page paper of sufficient quality and suitably documented for a project of its type to be deemed of professional quality by the supervising professor. There is also an experiential training requirement that can be satisfied by participation in one of the law school’s internship programs.

For foreign LL.M. candidates there are additional requirements: Introduction to American Law and Legal Education and Introduction to Legal Research and Writing.

These requirements and others may be waived at the discretion of the Program Director, based on an assessment of the candidate’s demonstrated proficiencies, and taking into consideration the candidate’s individual career interests and professional goals.

LL.M. Rules