Way back in a 2019 interview, Indian law graduate Lakshmi Neelakantan and I were discussing her reasons for opting for an MSc in Evidence-Based Social Intervention & Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford. After working as a transactional lawyer for a few years, Lakshmi decided to pursue higher education abroad. And the way she ended up deciding what and where to study was quite interesting.
"There was a whole world of courses out there," she said, "once I started to think of options apart from law....there were just so many possibilities."
This is a thought that I come back to quite frequently, whether it is while speaking with LLM applicants on their goals or while discussing India recruitments with foreign universities. The (often ignored) aspect of a strong legal education is that it opens up so many doors, in terms of vocation as well as further education.
And it is this thought, this seemingly endless list of "possibilities" that led towards this particular post where I hope to provide a few options for those Indian law graduates who wish to study abroad, but don't necessarily want to enrol for an LLM.
Accelerated Juris Doctor
Probably the closest to an LLM, the accelerated JD is a 2-year course that is offered by a small number of US law schools.
This program is ideal for those looking to pursue a US JD in a shorter period of time.
Also Read: FPA's of Vidhi Shah (Rutger's Law School), Ojas Patil (James E. Rogers College of Law)
Offered by the Faculty of Law and Said Business School, this course is particularly useful for lawyers looking to build their fundamentals in finance.
Also Read: FPA of Param Pandya
One of the most well-known schools in the field of international policy, the Fletcher's MALD course is useful for lawyers who are interested in understanding international affairs.
Read FPAs of Deborshi Barat, Annapurna Sreehari
A relatively new course (it was introduced in 2012), the MCL is ideal for lawyers who want a specialised degree in corporate law along with the branding and access that Cambridge brings to the table.
Read: FPA's of Kavya Lalchandani, Kirthana S. Khurana, Pranjal Doshi
Master's in Public Policy (MPP)
The idea behind an MPP is to provide a "....grounding of the theoretical and analytical disciplines, frameworks and tools essential for analysing the world we live in, and real-world policy applications."
Read: FPAs of Pallavi Sharma (University of Oxford), Ananya Chhaochharia (Harvard Kennedy School)
Master's in Business Administration
An option that is definitely worth considering, especially for transactional lawyers who are looking to move to the "other side" of the negotiations table.
Read: FPA's of Sanjana Tikkoo (Tuck School of Business), Akansha Singh (INSEAD), Shekhar Sumit (Yale School of Management)
Click here for a complete list of FPA's with law graduates who opted for a non-LLM course while pursuing higher education abroad.
Anuj A is co-founder, Amicus Partners. This post was first published here.