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  Welcome
to the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) credential evaluation and reporting
service for LLM candidates. This credential-assembly service is solely for
graduates of law schools outside of the US, who wish to obtain a Master of Laws
(LLM) degree (or other comparable law degree) from a participating U.S. law
school. Candidates educated solely in the US are not eligible for and do
not require this service.
For a fee of $185 (US),
LSAC, in cooperation with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and
Admissions Officers (AACRAO), will collect, authenticate, and process all
academic records and related documentation required by the law schools to which
you are applying. This includes transcripts/mark sheets, copies of
degrees/diplomas, degree and graduation certificates, and TOEFL
scores. Our evaluators will carefully review your documents and create a
report, designed to help the US law schools better understand your
credentials. What makes this service worthwhile is the fact that we
require only one transcript from your law school, and from any other college or
university you have attended, and the resulting report may be used for any
number of requesting law schools. In addition, your file remains
available for five years from the date of registration, and there is no need to
re-send your transcript in subsequent years, unless there has been an update or
correction to it. The registration fee includes reports to five law
schools, and additional reports [beyond five] may be ordered for a fee of $15
(US) each. You need not inform us of the law schools to which you are
applying. The law schools will request your report directly from us after
they receive your application. You need only provide the schools with
your LSAC account number, which will be assigned to you upon completion of your
online registration for this service. Your report will include
biographic, academic, and TOEFL score information. Copies of all
transcripts and related academic records will be included with our report to
the law schools. Class rank may be included when an official statement is
received on letterhead from the school, or when it is included on the official
transcript. Letters of recommendation are not included. Letters,
personal statements, and resumes should be sent directly to the law schools,
according to their application instructions. It is important to note that
the law school application process is separate from this credential-assembly
service. Candidates may apply to law schools electronically via each
school's website. It remains your responsibility to complete the
application and submit it by the school's deadline. Upon your acceptance
and enrollment in an LLM program, the law school will inform us of same and we
will forward your original documents to that school.
Upon completion of your online registration, you will be able to monitor the
progress of your file by logging in to your secure LSAC internet account at
www.LLM.LSAC.org.
The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) is a nonprofit corporation whose
members are 202 law schools in the United States and Canada. It was founded in
1947 to coordinate, facilitate, and enhance the law school admission process.
The organization also provides programs and services related to legal
education. All law schools approved by the American Bar Association (ABA) are
LSAC members. Canadian law schools recognized by a provincial or territorial
law society or government agency are also included in the voting membership of
the Council. LSAC does not engage in assessing an applicant's chances for
admission to any law school; all admission decisions are made by individual law
schools.
»
CLICK
HERE for a list of participating US Law
Schools.
Eligibility and Requirements
Our reports are available only to those law schools that
participate in this credential service.
To be eligible to apply to a participating LLM program, you must have
completed, or be in the process of completing, a degree that entitles you to
practice law in a country outside of the US.
If you are in the process of completing your degree, you should arrange for a
transcript of any and all available grades to be sent to us.
Later, when you have completed your degree, you should arrange for the
final transcript to be sent, at which time we will update your report free of
charge.
If
you have only recently enrolled in a course of study that you intend to list in
your education profile, please arrange for the school to send us a letter,
confirming your enrollment and the anticipated date of completion, if no grades
are available yet.
To
determine if you are eligible to apply to a participating LLM program, use
the chart
to locate the country in which you obtained (or will obtain) your law degree.
Next to the country name, the minimum degree required is specified.
These eligibility requirements apply to most law schools listed on this
website as participants in LSAC’s LLM Credential Assembly Service.
If either your degree or your country of study is not listed, please
contact the law school of interest to you to confirm eligibility.
Applicants
who have received (or will receive) their law degrees from
Puerto Rico
are not eligible for this credential service.
Note
that we list only the minimum requirements.
Candidates are expected to present all post-secondary education, including work
completed prior to and after the minimum degree listed.
Any omission of required education history could delay the review of
your credentials and, thereby, delay our report to the law schools.
You
will be required to submit to LSAC all of your attested documents from the
issuing institution or government agency, as well as the English translations.
(If your school has since closed, documents will likely be obtainable
from your Ministry of Education or similar government agency.)
For all schools, degrees, or coursework listed in your education
profile, we require an official transcript (or mark sheets) from the issuing
school, in the native language, to
be mailed to us in a sealed school envelope.
It must come from the school. Records
received from the candidate will be returned unprocessed.
If the school issues only one original to the graduate, then we will
accept a certified copy of the transcript, but it must be certified by the
issuing school as a true and correct copy of the original, and it must still be
mailed to us in a sealed school envelope from the school.
At a minimum, we should find the official school stamp/seal over the
sealed flap of the envelope. The
seal of a notary will not be accepted in place of the school’s certification.
When using express mail service, the express mail package must contain
the sealed school envelope. Documents
sent loose inside of an express mailer will not be accepted.
Our mailing address may be found on the Transcript Request Form, which
may be printed from your online file upon completion of your registration.
If
you are applying to schools that require your class rank, then you should ask
your school to include a statement of rank with the transcript that they mail
to us. Where applicable, this
includes a statement to the fact that your school does not use a system of
class rank.
An
English translation is required for all transcripts, mark sheets, and related
education records. The translation
need not be certified. Anyone may
do the translating, as long as it is a literal translation.
It may be sent under separate cover and it need not come from the
school. It is your responsibility
to provide us with the English translation.
LSAC does not offer a translation service.
If you have no copy of the transcript for yourself, from which to produce the
English translation, then we suggest that you order two originals from your
school – one to be sent to us, and one for yourself, to be used as a reference
for the English translation. NOTE:
If your school provides the option to print transcripts in
either the native language or
in English, you should order BOTH, as we will still require the native language
transcript from the school, even if the English version is received on
letterhead from the school. If you
should use the services of a professional translator, that person must sign the
translated copy and include contact information.
Once
LSAC has received all of your required records, up to and including the first
degree in law transcript, our evaluators will begin their review.
The credential analysis will take approximately two to three weeks.
During peak processing periods, it does take longer.
There may be further delay in the event that we need to request
additional information in order to complete the review.
You are
urged to begin the process of ordering your academic records well in advance of
your application deadlines.
Candidates
who have earned one or more of the following degrees or diplomas are required
to submit copies thereof, together with the English translations.
We reserve the right to request copies of other degrees not listed.
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Abogado
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DEA
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DEUG
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Licence en droit
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Maitrise en droit
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Licenciado [or Grado] en derecho
Candidates
educated in the People’s Republic of
China
are required to submit the following documents in order for an LSAC evaluation
to be completed:
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Official Degree Certificates (Zhuanke, Bachelor's,
Master's, etc.) and Graduation Diplomas in Chinese for
all programs undertaken along with a complete and literal English translation
of each.
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Official college or university academic record
(transcript) in Chinese showing all courses and grades
for all years of study along with a complete and literal English translation.
Note: The academic record must be issued by the
institution's central administrative office, responsible for preparing and
verifying official student records. Documents issued by an individual
academic department or by a notary public are not considered
official.
»
CLICK HERE
to view the Minimum Degree Requirements by Country chart.
We understand that, in some countries, the names of these
degrees are in the process of changing.
What most law schools require is a law degree that allows you to practice law
in that country.
Payment of Fees
The fee for
LSAC’s LLM Credential Assembly Service is
$185, payable with a valid credit card in US dollars.
Your credit card information will be collected upon completion of your
online registration at www.LLM.LSAC.org.
If you do not have a valid credit card,
you may still register online and pay the fee by mail with an international
money order, payable in US dollars to Law School Admission Council, or, if you
have a
US
bank account, you may send check or money order, payable in US dollars to Law
School Admission Council. Please
include your LSAC account number on any check or money order payment.
An account number will be assigned to you when you complete your online
registration. No credential
analysis may begin until the registration fee is paid in full, and this fee is
not refundable once such review has begun.
The
LLM service does not collect individual law school application fees.
As the candidate, you remain responsible for your own applications and
application fees, deliverable directly to the school(s) to which you are
applying. See each school’s
website for electronic application availability.
Stop
Payments/Returned Checks/Credit Card Denial
If credit card authorization is denied, a hold will be placed
on your file, and neither credential analysis nor law school reporting will be
possible until the outstanding balance is paid in full.
Credit card denial will not cancel your
registration for this credential service.
If
you stop payment on any check, or if a check is returned, a hold will be placed
on your file, and a fee of $30 (US) will be applied to your account.
Neither credential analysis nor law school reporting will be possible
until the outstanding balance, including the $30 charge, is paid in full.
Stopping payment on your check will not cancel your registration for
this credential service.
Refund Policy
The registration fee is only refundable when
LSAC has not begun the process of reviewing your credentials and your file has
not expired. To request a refund,
please either fax or scan & email your signed request to LSAC LLM
Credential Assembly Service. It
must include your name, account number, and your signature.
Fees paid for additional law school reports are non-refundable.
Fax:
215-504-1456
Email:
LLMinfo@LSAC.org
Reevaluation of Credentials
If, after reviewing the completed report of your credentials, you
wish to challenge an item(s) on the report, you may do so by requesting a
reevaluation via the Reports page of your online account. A
non-refundable fee of $40 (US) is charged for this service.
Please note that the following instances do not
require reevaluation:
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Adding a TOEFL score, regardless of whether or
not the report has been completed.
TOEFL scores may be added at any time free of charge.
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Adding a transcript from a US school.
US transcripts require no evaluation, but we do include them as a courtesy and
to account for all education you have listed in your profile.
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If we already have a transcript and your report is complete, but the
same school sends us a final/updated/corrected transcript after the fact.
In this case, we will update your report free of charge upon receipt of the
official updated transcript from the school.
TOEFL Score
Many law schools require
the
Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).
It is your responsibility to identify which of the schools of interest
to you require this test. LSAC
will include your TOEFL score(s) on your LLM credential analysis upon receipt
from Educational Testing Service (ETS).
We have arranged with ETS to receive your score(s) electronically.
This is only possible if and when you supply ETS with our institution
code 8395 at the time that you
place your order for a copy of the score report to be sent to LSAC.
You may be asked to choose a department code as well.
Any department code will do, regardless of the corresponding department
name, as long as you use institution code 8395.
We cannot accept paper copies from candidates.
Law schools participating in this credential service will accept your
TOEFL results as part of your LSAC LLM report, so there is no need to have ETS
send additional copies to the participating law schools.
It is your responsibility to learn from the law school(s) how old of a
score is acceptable to them.
Please
note that, once we receive a TOEFL score from ETS, it cannot be deleted or
replaced. There are no exceptions
to this rule. To avoid disclosing
an undesirable score to a law school, we suggest that you wait to learn your
test results before ordering a copy to be sent to LSAC.
In the event that we already have a score on file for you, and you
decide to retest and have the new score sent to us, we will report both scores.
The new score will not replace the previous, regardless of how long ago
the previous score was reported. LSAC
will report a maximum of four TOEFL scores on your law school report.
In cases where more than four scores are received for one candidate, the
four highest scores will be reported.
If
we receive your TOEFL score(s) from ETS
after your report
has been completed and/or released to a participating law school, we will
update your report, to reflect your TOEFL results, free of charge.
The updated report will automatically be forwarded to the school(s) that
previously received your report. The
ETS/TOEFL website follows.
http://www.toefl.org
Service
Fee Reduction Requests
Fees for this service may be reduced at the discretion of individual
participating law schools. To request a fee reduction, contact the LLM
admission director at the law school to which you wish to apply. All financial
needs analysis information must be submitted directly to the law school. Do not
register with LSAC for the credential assembly service until the school informs
you of its fee reduction decision. Once you have paid the full fee for this
service, your fee will not be reduced.
Transcripts
The Transcript Request Form should be printed out at the
completion of your online registration
and should accompany the transcript(s) being sent by your school(s) to this
credential service.
Transcripts
may also be known to you as Mark Sheets, Grade Sheets, Course Records, Academic
Records, or Examination Results and include, where applicable, Diploma and
Diploma Supplement, Degree Certificate and Graduation Certificate, and First
State Exam Certificate. The transcript is a complete list of courses
taken and grades earned at an institution, college, university, or school.
Transcripts
are required from your law school and from any other college or university you
have attended. We do not need your
secondary school transcripts. Secondary
education information is collected during registration solely for verification
purposes.
Send
the Transcript Request Form to each of the post-secondary schools you have
attended, regardless of whether or not a degree was completed, and ask each of
them to complete the form and return it to us by mail together with your
official transcript.
This includes those schools you have visited for a semester or summer
abroad. All official school
documents must be received in a sealed school envelope.
Student-issued documents are unacceptable.
When using an express mail service, the sealed school envelope should be
contained inside of the express mailer.
Documents will not be accepted loose inside of the express mailer.
We require an official transcript in the NATIVE LANGUAGE
to be sent to us directly from the issuing school.
Only the English translation may come from the candidate.
We
do require an English translation of your transcripts.
Anyone may do the translation, as long as it is a literal translation.
It need not be certified. It
may be sent under separate cover by postal mail, email, or fax.
The translation need not come from the school.
It is your responsibility to provide LSAC with the English translation
of your transcripts. LSAC does not
offer a translation service.
NOTE:
If your school provides the option to print transcripts in either
the native language or in English, you should order BOTH, as
we will still require the native language transcript from the school, even if
the English version is received on letterhead from the school.
If you should use the services of a professional translator, that person
must sign the translated copy and include contact information.
All academic records and
statements of class rank MUST be sent directly to LSAC from the issuing
institution. LSAC will not accept
transcripts or statements issued to you or sent by you.
At a minimum, we expect to find the official school
seal/stamp over the sealed flap of the envelope.
Transcripts should list the
courses taken, semester hours, and grades.
For programs of study still in progress, and for which no
grades are yet available, we require written confirmation from the school of
your current enrollment, expected completion date, and the fact that no grades
are available. This too must be
mailed to us in a sealed school envelope.
School-issued
transcripts received by LSAC, and copies thereof, cannot be returned to the
candidate or provided to any third party, including bar examiners.
Because we are not the issuing institution, we have no authority to make
copies of your credentials available to any party other than those requesting
law schools that participate in the LSAC LLM Credential Assembly Service.
No World Education Service (WES) or other outside evaluations will be
considered for review. Our
evaluators will provide their own report based on a thorough review of your
official school-issued documents alone.
We do reserve the right to request further documentation from you or
verification directly from the school.
Once LSAC has received all of your documents, we ask that you allow a minimum
of ten to fifteen business days for a report to be completed, provided no
additional documentation is needed.
Particularly
for those of you currently located outside of the country where you studied,
arranging for transcript delivery can be time-consuming.
It is your responsibility, and we urge you, to begin the process of
requesting transcripts well in advance of your LLM application deadlines.
Under no circumstances will an individual credential review be rushed
ahead of others. Note:
You may begin applying to LLM programs at any time.
You need not wait for our report to be completed before you submit
applications. Furthermore, you
need not inform us of the law schools to which you are applying.
The law schools will request your report from us after they receive your
application. Please include your
LSAC account number on your law school applications, as the law schools will
reference this number when they request your report.
If
your credential analysis is completed, based on a partial transcript of grades,
please be sure to have your school send the final transcript upon completion of
your studies. We will update your
report free of charge when we receive an official final, updated, or corrected
transcript for a school or degree already listed in your education profile.
If
you wish to add, for our review, a school or degree not previously listed in
your education profile, and your report has already been completed, a request
for reevaluation will be required. Go to the Reports page of your online
file and select Reevaluation. A
nonrefundable fee of $40 (US)will be charged for this service.
An official transcript will be required from the school.
If you are adding a US school, you may do so free of charge, and no
reevaluation is needed.
Ordering Additional Law School Reports
If you require more than the five law school reports included in your LLM
service registration fee of $185 (US), you may order them online for $15 (US)
each. While you may order
additional reports during your online registration, you may want to wait to
order them at a later date, when you are certain that more than five reports
are needed, as the additional report fee is not refundable.
To order later, simply log in to your online file at
www.LLM.LSAC.org
and look for the heading
Available Reports on your
Reports page.
Contact
US
LSAC LLM Credential
Assembly Service
662 Penn St. Box 8511
Newtown, PA 18940-8511
USA
For express mail: Omit Box 8511
E-mail:
LLMinfo@LSAC.org
Fax: 215.504.1456
Phone: 215-968-1315
Please
note the contact information above for future reference.
All questions about your LLM Credential Service file should be addressed
to LLMinfo@LSAC.org.
To log in to your file, once registered, return to
www.LLM.LSAC.org,
not LSAC.org.
The latter site addresses the needs of JD candidates.
Law
School-Specific Help
Please address
school-specific questions to the law school of
interest to you. If you return to
the
List of Participating US Law Schools
you may click on the name of any school listed to reach the
school’s web site. Some of your
questions may be addressed there.
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Registration
After having read
the information above, if you are confident that you are eligible to apply to a
LLM program at one of our participating
US
law schools, you may begin the registration process by clicking on
the button below, which reads CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT.
We
ask that you have the following information available in order to complete your
registration:
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Secondary school [or high school] name and date of
completion.
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Name of institution
which awarded your first degree in law, dates of attendance, name of degree
awarded and date awarded.
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Names of all other
post-secondary institutions attended, dates of enrollment for each, names
of degree(s) awarded, if any, and date(s) awarded.
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TOEFL test date, if
available, and the registration/appointment number for that test.
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Credit card to be
charged: type, account number, expiration date, and security code.
Click  for
more information about a specific field.
Please
make sure you have read all of the above
information before creating your account.
Netscape
users please note: The LLM Credential Assembly
Service website has been designed to work best with Internet Explorer. The site
may not work properly if you are using Netscape.
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