Thousands of international legal professionals go to the US annually to pursue further legal education. Frequently, they decide to enroll in an LL.M. or Master of Laws program. The Juris Doctor, or J.D., program and the LL.M. program are not the same. To practice law in the United States, one must hold a J.D. degree. Legal professionals gain knowledge of the American government, the American legal system, and global legal concerns through the LL.M. program. Intellectual property, international business, immigration, human rights, and security are just a few of the fields in which they may focus.
According to a 2020 survey by Indiana University’s Center for Postsecondary Research, 79 percent of LL.M. students at American law schools are foreign nationals. Aimé Mbarushimana is one of these students. After practicing law for 15 years in Rwanda, Aimé moved to American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. to acquire further training in arbitration, mediation, and alternative dispute resolution. These are means of settling issues without legal action.
He claimed that the education he had at American University contributes to the upholding of Rwanda’s traditional Ubuntu belief system. Ubuntu places a great emphasis on creating communities and agreements. In an interview with VOA Learning English, he suggested that increasing mediation could help reduce the volume of court cases in Rwanda and free up judges’ time to handle them. In Kosovo, a country in Eastern Europe, Mimoza Shala works as a prosecutor. She is enrolled at Wake Forest University’s School of Law’s LL.M. program in North Carolina. The last ten years have seen the school work in collaboration with the US Departments of State and Justice to provide legal professionals from Kosovo with training.
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