The Juris Doctor degree is the most common law degree, and most law schools in the U.S. offer the JD. Students attend school for three years full-time. The first year is usually spent learning legal basics in classes such as civil procedure, criminal justice, contracts, torts and legal research and writing. In the second and third years, students take elective courses such as business law, family law and criminal law. Popular courses include corporations, which teach the legal structure of corporations; international law, which focuses on international legal structures such as treaties, multinational business law and multilateral organizations such as the United Nations; and evidence, which focuses on the introduction of evidence in trial court. Graduates of ABA-approved JD degree programs are qualified to take the bar exam in their choice of state, a prerequisite to practicing law.
Many law schools offer executive JD programs, often part-time JD programs designed for students who work full-time. Students in these programs typically study for four years, and executive JD programs can be tailored to incorporate experience from the candidate's current career. For example, an engineer may focus on intellectual property law. Other executive programs are geared for people who wish to study the law for reasons unrelated to taking the bar or practicing as a lawyer.
The LLM degree provides opportunities for students who are already certified lawyers to specialize in a particular aspect of the law. This allows practicing lawyers to change to another type of law or further specialize in their chosen field. Popular LLM programs include tax law, international law and environmental law, and most degrees require one year of study. The LLM degree also qualifies foreign-certified attorneys to sit for the bar and practice law in any state in the U.S.
There are a few other master's degrees in law offered by a few schools in the U.S. Stanford offers the Master in Legal Studies, a one-year program that gives nonlawyers an introduction to the law and is designed for any postgraduate student who would benefit from understanding legal frameworks. In 2007, Georgetown initiated a Masters of Studies in Law in which experienced journalists study most of the first-year law curriculum with a few electives added.
A few law schools also provide SJD degrees, research-based dissertation programs for certified attorneys who wish to teach or perform other scholarly legal research. SJD programs usually run about one year for those who already hold a JD or foreign equivalent.
Countries other than the U.S. have different types of law programs other than the JD to train their lawyers. In some places, such as the United Kingdom, legal education consists of a bachelor's degree and three or four years of training at the undergraduate level. Many others also have LLM programs that provide primary legal education that is a prerequisite to practicing law.