With the arrival of the incoming class on Aug. 17, both tradition and change were in the air.
The 10th orientation captured a ritual where administrators and faculty welcome eager and sometimes anxious students to the law school community.
But this year, the first cohort of LLM and Global JD students arrived, greatly expanding the presence of international students at the Kline School of Law.
Six attorneys from Israel, China and Germany are pursuing the law school’s new LLM in American Legal Practice, which will provide them with an immersion in the U.S. legal system.
Nine students from France, Russia, Pakistan, Spain, China and Uruguay who completed bachelor’s level studies abroad will earn JDs in as little as two years and be eligible to sit for the bar exam and practice law in the U.S. through the Global JD program.
Ruba Noor, a native of Pakistan who studied the law in England, said law schools have not followed the lead of medical schools, which have long allowed foreign-trained doctors to prepare to practice in the U.S.
“It’s a very good initiative,” Noor said of the Global JD program.
Having practiced law for two years with the Tel Aviv firm, Naschitz Brandes Amir, LLM student Moshe Saado said that learning about the legal system in the U.S. will give him a comparative perspective that will aid his work with both clients and judges in Israel.
“We’re delighted to welcome these students,” Dean Roger Dennis said. “Their presence will make our already vibrant law school community even more diverse.”
Acknowledging the rigors of law school, Dennis urged the students to get adequate sleep and exercise and to make a point of spending some of their time with friends and family who are not obsessed with the law.
All of the students had arrived at a law school that is “in fact different” from the others they could have chosen and that features an unusually engaged community, Senior Associate Dean Dan Filler said.
“All of you are going to weave a web of professional relationships and connections,” he said.