United States

The United States no longer offers the LL.B., though some universities have introduced Bachelor of Science degrees in legal studies featuring curricula that include courses in constitutional law, tort law, and criminal law. The Master of Science of Laws (M.S.L.) is also offered in some universities accredited by the American Bar Association. While the LL.B. was conferred until 1971 at Yale University, since that time, all universities in the United States have awarded the professional doctorate J.D., which then became the generally standardized degree in most states as the compulsory prerequisite to sit for and matriculate from the bar exam prior to practice of law. Many law schools converted their basic law degree programmes from LL.B. to J.D. in the 1960s, and permitted prior LL.B. graduates to retroactively receive the new doctorate degrees by returning their LL.B. in exchange for a J.D. degree. Yale graduates who received LL.B. degrees prior to 1971 were similarly permitted to change their degree to a J.D., though many did not take the option, choosing to retain their LL.B. degrees.

Before the program was phased out, notable recipients of the LL.B. include former U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, former U.S. Supreme Court Justices Earl Warren, Anthony Kennedy, William Rehnquist, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, current Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, American judge and jurist Richard Allen Posner, as well as the first female commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, Frieda B. Hennock.

In 2014, the University of Arizona established the Bachelor of Arts in Law (B.A. in Law), in which undergraduate students take core law classes taught by law school faculty in subjects such as property, contracts, torts, administrative law, and criminal and civil procedure. The B.A. in Law also provides the opportunity for an expedited path to law school, allowing qualified students to start pursuing a J.D. at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law after their junior year, thus earning both a Bachelor of Arts in Law and a J.D. in six years.

Eligibility of foreign graduates in the U.S.edit

For the most part, foreign law graduates seeking admission to the bar in the United States will find their LL.B. law degree does not of itself fulfill the core admission requirements of most states, thereby not allowing them to take the bar exam.

The major exception to this is New York, where those foreign graduates who have fulfilled the educational requirements to practice law in another common law country through study at an approved educational institution, similar in both duration and content to the equivalent teaching at an approved U.S. law school, are permitted to sit for the bar exam. Additionally, both New York and Massachusetts permit Canadian LL.B. holders to take the bar exam. The requirements of each of the states vary, and in some states sufficient years of practice in one's home country may allow for those otherwise excluded to sit for the bar exam. Interested applicants should check the requirements of each state bar association carefully as requirements vary markedly.

Most states require completion of a law degree from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association. As a result, American law schools typically offer one-year LL.M. programmes for foreign attorneys; many such law schools may have no other LL.M. programmes. Classes included in these "American Law", "Comparative Law" inter alia LL.M. programmes are selected to introduce foreign attorneys to American-style common law practice, such as first-year J.D. courses on civil procedure, constitutional law, criminal law, legal research and analysis, and jurisprudence.