Six-Semester JD/LLM in Banking & Financial Law
Program Overview
By taking qualifying courses during the second and third years of the JD program, a student can earn credit toward both the JD degree and the LLM degree in Banking & Financial Law. Students would obtain all the necessary credits for their JD and LLM degrees in six semesters of study and therefore be eligible to receive the JD degree and LLM degree at the end of the three years. The six-semester program is an accelerated variant of BU Law’s seven-semester JD/LLM in Banking & Financial Law.
Prerequisites
To be accepted to the six-semester program, a student completes, through the JD curriculum, three prerequisite courses comprising a total of eleven (11) credit hours. The prerequisite courses are Corporations (4 credits), Financial Regulation (3 credits), and Secured Transactions (4 credits).
Unlike in the seven-semester program, credit will be granted toward the LLM degree for these courses.
Ideally, Financial Regulation should be taken prior to admission to the six-semester program, but if it is only offered in the fall semester in a year, with permission of the director of the Banking & Financial Law LLM program, the course may be taken in fall of the student’s 3L year. The student would still need to complete seven additional LLM courses in their 3L year.
Required Credit Hours
The number of credit hours required for the LLM degree in the six-semester program is 24, the same number as required for the full-year LLM degree. Since the student will be granted eleven (11) credit hours for the courses in Corporations, Secured Transactions, and Financial Regulation, the student will typically need to successfully complete seven 2-credit courses in the LLM program to be eligible for the award of the degree, although six 2-credit and one 1-credit courses in the LLM program will suffice. These LLM credits will also count toward the JD degree.
Admission to the Program
JD students may apply for admission to the six-semester JD/LLM in Banking & Financial Law at any time during their second year at BU Law; however, the application must be completed no later than July 31 in the summer prior to the student’s 3L year. Students applying for admission should speak to the director of the Graduate Program in Banking & Financial Law about choice of LLM courses.
Final admission to the six-semester program requires that the student has earned a cumulative grade point average of 2.7 or higher in all prerequisite courses, including the Financial Regulation course.
