LLM Community, Culture & Faculty

Small, Selective and Welcoming Community

Among the most distinguished U.S. law schools, the University of Chicago is the only one which offers the combination of a small LL.M. program with a real sense of community among its students, a challenging academic experience both inside and outside the classroom and an exciting urban location in one of the great cities of the world (Chicago has been named the best big city in America by Conde Nast five years in a row).

Our LLM graduates say that their year at the Law School had a great impact on both their subsequent personal and professional lives. They also look back fondly at the friendships that developed and the experiences they shared with classmates and others in the University community. 

Academic Culture  

Critical reasoning is a crucial part of the University of Chicago Law School experience - perhaps our defining characteristic. Our faculty and students are deeply involved in the "life of the mind," as we call it, and delight in spending their days challenging each other to dig ever deeper into the law as an intellectual discipline. Read more about the teaching and research philosophies that make the Law School unique.

Faculty 

The Law School has assembled a faculty that is distinguished for its scholarship and its teaching ability. Many LLM students are surprised to discover how accessible and available the faculty are. The custom is for faculty to work in their offices with their doors open. Students do not need to make appointments to meet with them. In addition to the full-time members of the faculty, the Law School has approximately 90 practitioners, faculty members from other areas of the University, and visiting professors from other law schools, who teach courses and seminars each year.

Detailed information about individual faculty members can be found on our website. A significant portion of the faculty represents academic fields other than law, including economics, history, philosophy, and political science. The strong orientation of the faculty toward research provides students with unusually good opportunities and LLM students often do independent research projects with members of the faculty instead of taking a class or seminar.