My first piece for the International Jurist was about the J.D. v. A.J.D. question. And they still have it on the main landing page, so I hope that doesn’t mean I haven’t written anything as good in the 27 pieces since! And just because someone may ask: “easiest” on their other piece brings up a host of other questions. Easiest to qualify for, easiest to take, easiest to pass, etc. But let’s not get distracted from today’s focus: (A.)J.D. degrees!

1. Why did I write my first piece on J.D. degrees when I am an “LL.M. guy?” Although I’ve worked with J.D. students at all three U.S. law schools I worked at (I had only been at two schools when I wrote the piece), I wouldn’t say it was a primary part of my work since at least 2014-15. Which was my second year of working, when I was not yet “all in” on LL.M. stuff on the staff side, although it was almost all of my teaching. But, F-1 J.D. students tended to find me, and LL.M. students interested in J.D. degrees after definitely found me. Combined with some of my LEALS students choosing J.D. degrees instead of LL.M. degrees and some LEALSers doing a J.D. after an LL.M. degree, it was a topic I spoke about a lot. And so I figured it would be a helpful one to test out my new Contributor position.

2. It is easy for LL.M. students who feel disappointed to say they would choose a J.D. (or A.J.D.) if they had a time machine. My polling on Beyond Non-JD bears that out. But that avoids a couple major considerations: One of them is getting into the program you’d want to attend. Again, the ABA website is helpful in this regard.

Rather the content and requirements of those degrees, such as an LL.M., are created by the law school itself and do not reflect any judgment by the ABA accrediting bodies regarding the quality of the program. Moreover, admission requirements for such programs, particularly with regard to foreign students, vary from school to school, and are not evaluated through the ABA accreditation process.

J.D. degree admission standards versus Non-J.D. admission standards may mean that the type of school you went to for an LL.M. degree may not be the type of school you would have gone to for a J.D. degree. And so the questions about standardized test scores, your applicant profile, etc. would be important. Did you take the LSAT/GRE and ultimately decide on the LL.M. route instead? Practice scores may not tell the story of how you would perform. And so if seeing a lot of J.D. students seemingly walk into high-paying BigLaw jobs at your school is the reason, you’d want to do more research into the BigLaw percentages around all the schools, including those based on different LSAT/GRE bands.

3. On the J.D. v. A.J.D. front, an update since that article is the changes to weights for the USNWR rankings. You can see the 2025 weights here, though I like Spivey’s 2023 visualization here. As you can see, post-J.D. jobs “matter” even more now, as USNWR shifted more to outputs after a number of top law schools decided to stop playing along (h/t to Yale for leading). So while it is important for J.D. students what they’re doing afterwards, it is also very important to schools. When interests align, I think that’s a good thing and that’s part of my critique of how Non-J.D. operations are handled is that there are more opportunities for interests to diverge. You can see the ABA Required Disclosures surrounding Employment Outcomes here, and there are a couple other good resources (e.g., NALP). So while that is good news, my first question when asked about A.J.D. v. J.D. is thinking about likely A.J.D. or J.D. admissions and post-J.D. employment options and outcomes. And remember to check each school’s A.J.D. requirements!

4. And this is where even for great candidates, the harsh reality is that the F-1 v. U.S. citizen/LPR distinction matters more than ever. For F-1s, the J.D. is not a magical way to automatically stay in the U.S. upon completion, just like the LL.M. is not an automatic banishment after you graduate. Some F-1 J.D. grads struggle to secure jobs while some F-1 LL.M. grads are making much more than many U.S. J.D. grads. A lot has changed since I wrote that article politically, and OPT is a target to some. So if the LL.M. can be seen by some as a one-year U.S. degree to go home, that’s not usually how we think about a J.D. degree (though I know international J.D. grads who are now back home working). And so what happens if schools with large numbers of F-1 J.D. students have to start thinking about narrowing opportunities to stay in the U.S.? 10 months is where people pay attention for ABA purposes, but lawyer careers last much longer. And it’s why I highlighted the article earlier this week, Young Chinese Lawyers in America Are Displaced. Where Should They Go From Here? A J.D. may make the path to traditional hiring more clear (large firm, return offer), but if it’s a J.D.+OPT and then needing to reassess (or even just a J.D.), then that makes the J.D. v. A.J.D. decision even more challenging. U.S. citizens and LPRs are in a similar situation as when I wrote that article. F-1s? The world has changed.

5. What would I change if I wrote the article today? Or updated it? That’s really hard to tell. Anything I missed back then or glossed over that you think deserved way more consideration (with the caveat that the 2022-23 pieces were ~1500 words apiece and so I obviously couldn’t cover everything like in a law review length article!).