University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law

How to Apply

Initial stages

Students at Trinity College CambridgeThe following information is for general guidance only. It is very important that you consult and read carefully the information supplied by the University’s Board of Graduate Studies.

  • Obtain an application form, complete it and send it to the University’s Board of Graduate Studies. All applications must be made through the Board of Graduate Studies, using one of the following methods:
  • Arrange for transcripts and letters of recommendation to be sent to the Board of Graduate Studies. See the Board of Graduate Studies site for further details. In selecting referees please bear in mind the LL.M. Admissions Committee typically finds academic references the most useful. Letters of recommendation which explain how an applicant performed in his/her academic studies in comparison to his/her peers are also of particular value to the Committee.
  • Take an English language proficiency test, if required, and arrange for the Board of Graduate Studies to receive the results.
  • Submit the relevant documentation to the Board of Graduate Studies by the prescribed deadline. The LL.M. application deadline is 2 December in the year preceding the year in which you wish to join the course. For example, if you wish to join the course in October 2012, the deadline for applying is 2 December 2011. Late applications will not be considered.

LL.M. Applications decision process

After applications are received by the Board of Graduate Studies they are forwarded to the LL.M. Admissions Committee at the Faculty of Law, which then considers applications on their academic merits. Decisions made by the LL.M. Admissions Committee are then relayed to the Board of Graduate Studies, who will notify applicants formally of offers and rejections and, in the case of offers, deal with satisfaction of conditions attached. The admissions process is available in diagram form.

The LL.M. Admissions Committee considers applications in two stages. First, there is an initial screening of all applications. At this point, some applications that clearly do not meet the required academic standards will be rejected and a number of expedited offers will begin to be made to clearly outstanding applicants. Second, all remaining applications will be considered and ranked against each other so as to determine when an offer of an LL.M. place will be made.

Please note that all LL.M. offers are conditional in the first instance as every applicant has a college membership condition and a finance condition attached to their offer, even if they do not also have academic or language conditions to satisfy.

The Law Faculty will finalise all LL.M. application decisions by 15 April 2012 for the 2012-2013 LL.M course. Prior to this time, you can check the status of your application on your online self-service page, which is accessible through the Board of Graduate Studies website. You will receive a username and password for the self service page from the Board of Graduate Studies once they have logged receipt of your application.

If the Faculty of Law decides to give you a conditional offer of a place on the LL.M., you will be notified firstly by an e-mail from the Faculty. This will be followed up by notification of the offer on your Camsis self service web page and then by a formal offer letter from the Board of Graduate Studies. This can take several weeks, so applicants who have received e-mail notification of their offer should not be concerned about a delay.

If your application is unsuccessful, you can find out about this decision first on your online self-service page. You will also receive e-mail confirmation from the Board of Graduate Studies. The Law Faculty does not e-mail unsuccessful applicants.

If you have not found out by April 15th whether your application has been successful, please check this website again for any revisions to the timetable.

If you have received an offer of a place on the LL.M.

You will likely first hear of your offer from the Law Faculty, typically by an e-mail from the Faculty administrator for the LL.M. Congratulations! Additional steps have to occur, however, before you take up your place.

The Law Faculty will notify the University’s Board of Graduate Studies (BGS) of your offer. The Board of Graduate Studies will send you a formal conditional offer in the following weeks. You must satisfy all of the relevant conditions to take up your place on the LL.M. and should not move to Cambridge until BGS has told you that you have provided the evidence required to meet the terms of your offer.

After the Law Faculty notifies BGS of a successful application, BGS’ Admissions Office sends the application to the college in order of the preference stated by the applicant. Once the process is complete, BGS and the college will notify you of an offer of a college place.

Once you have satisfied the conditions attached to your offer you must send the evidence to BGS which will send you a confirmation letter.

A month or so before the start of the academic year, the Law Faculty will contact all those to whom offers of an LL.M. place have been made to seek further information about their plans for the coming academic year. Those taking up their place should reply by the deadline specified. You remain obliged to satisfy all conditions attached to your offer before you can take up your place.

Students from a civil law background can attend a series of optional lectures on the common law system held immediately prior to the beginning of formal LL.M. lectures.

The Law Faculty may be prepared to defer an offer under some circumstances.

Offer conditions

Financial conditions

Any offer of a place at Cambridge will depend on your providing evidence that you can afford to study here. Guidance is available from the BGS website.

Academic conditions

For applicants who are completing their legal studies during the year when they apply for the LL.M., the LL.M. applications committee will often make the offer conditional upon the applicant performing to a stipulated level as they complete their studies. The setting of conditions will be governed by the fact that applicants are normally expected to achieve a First class degree in the case of a UK university or its equivalent from overseas.

Evidence that you have satisfied your academic conditions must be supplied by July 31 of the year in which you are seeking to enroll in the LL.M. course.

Language conditions

If English is not your first language and you have not undertaken your prior academic studies in English you will need to take a language proficiency test and achieve scores at or above the prescribed level. The tests which the University accepts for this purpose are the IELTS test and the TOEFL test. Evidence that you have satisfied your language conditions must be supplied by July 31 of the year in which you are seeking to enroll in the LL.M. course.

College membership

The Faculty of Law and the Board of Graduate Studies decide whether to admit an applicant to the LL.M., but formal admittance to Cambridge University is conditional on acceptance by a college because an applicant cannot become a member of the University without being a member of a college. As a result, no candidate can come into residence until their admission both by the University and by a college have been confirmed by the Board of Graduate Studies. In practice all LL.M. students are admitted to a college, though they will not necessarily be given membership of one of their preferred colleges, in large part because a number of popular colleges are over-subscribed.

Immigration requirements

Please see the University’s Board of Graduate Studies webpage on immigration for details on the procedure for obtaining a visa to study at Cambridge.