Executive LL.M.
Two world-class institutions, one unique experience.
9 Months
English
Madrid - Online - Chicago
Master
Part-Time Master Program
September
The Executive LLM Program is a joint degree governed by two of the world’s leading law schools: Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and IE Law School. Since its launch in 2006, the Executive LLM is Europe’s pioneering LLM Program for working lawyers, providing participants the opportunity to earn an LLM from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (an applicant without a first degree in law may be admitted as a candidate for the Master of Studies in Law (MSL) degree on proof of substantial work experience dealing with legal or regulatory matters) and a Certificate in Business Administration from IE Business School with little career interruption.
OFFICIAL DEGREE
Upon program completion, students will receive a LLM or a Master of Studies in Law (MSL) degree from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
Expand your professional future in the United States
Become a U.S. attorney
IE Law School remains at the forefront of legal education. Forever driven by our need to innovate, our graduates of the Executive LL.M. may now qualify to take the California Bar Exam, whether qualified or not in their home countries and provided that they have a valid first-degree in law and meet all other requirements set by the Bar Association. While IE Law School does not guarantee bar exam eligibility to students in this program for any state, the California State Bar has notified Northwestern Law that the current Executive LL.M. will qualify a student to take the California Bar Exam.
While LL.M. programs from other ABA-approved universities only allow their students to apply to the Bar if they are qualified as lawyers in their countries, we have included a course on Ethics and Professional Responsibility to the program enabling our students to apply for the California Bar. This online course, a two-week elective, will be taught by a professor from Northwestern University. It will provide our students with the necessary expertise to attain this prestigious certification.
*Please refer to the Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admission Requirements for more information on bar exam eligibility requirements for any state.
A unique Part-Time program
First Period: Summer in Madrid (2.5 Weeks)
The Executive LLM Program kicks off in September with a short introduction to the common law, then moves right into subjects fundamental to the business lawyer.
Second Period: Fall in Madrid (2 Weeks)
Participants return to Madrid in the autumn to continue their study of more advanced areas of interest to the international practitioner and two additional areas of management and business administration.
Third Period: Spring in Chicago (2.5 Weeks)
The Program ends up in Chicago, where participants come together for the final on-campus period leading up to the Convocation Ceremony in mid-May.
1st On-campus PeriodSeptember 12th – September 27th, 2019
Madrid
1st onlineperiod
October 7th –
November 9th, 2019
2nd On-campus PeriodNovember 18th – November 29th, 2019
Madrid
2nd onlineperiod
January 6th –
March 21th, 2019
3rd On-campus PeriodApril 29th –
May 15th, 2020
Chicago
GraduationMay 15th, 2020
(tentative)
RESIDENTIAL OPTION IN CHICAGO
Students who can take a longer time away from work, and who would like more time in a traditional classroom environment, may want to consider the Residential Option in Chicago. This option combines the first semester of the Traditional Executive Program with the entire Spring Semester (January - May) in residence at Northwestern Law. Under this option, participants may choose from among a wide variety of courses offered to residential JD and LLM students at Northwestern Law.
This module has the particularity of being imparted through a blended modality, being that each course is formed of sessions in class and others through an online environment, enhancing the flexibility required by students with a demanding professional schedule.
Financial Accounting
Accounting is the primary language of business. This course will emphasize the understanding of how financial statements are created and how accounting decisions affect these statements. The course will teach concepts essential to the reporting of a company´s financial position, operating results and cash flows. Upon completion, students will have sufficient knowledge of the fundamental concepts, terminology and techniques of financial accounting to analyze a corporate annual report.
Corporate Finance
This course is an introduction to the main concepts and issues in corporate financial management. The course will focus on providing skills to measure the economic value created when making investment decisions and will go over accounting statements. As a second step, the course will approach cash flow statements, to finish with the time value of money and the introduction of business valuation through ratios.
Marketing for Lawyers
The course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental principles of marketing and the role of marketing in the modern corporation, emphasizing the regulatory, legal and ethical aspects of marketing, applied to law firms or organizations that provide professional legal services. The course will focus on a theoretical approach, basic techniques and will provide practical examples of how marketing has been applied in legal services firms.
Business Strategy
This introductory course to the area of strategic management aims to provide students with a thorough understanding of the internal and external factors that shape a firm’s ability to create value. The course strives to instill a strategic mindset that will enable students to go beyond a simple application of tools to derive a deep understanding of firm competitive behavior in order to enhance their own firm’s performance in any given situation.
International Arbitration
The aim of the course is to acquire deep knowledge about the methods and basic concepts within international arbitration and to get to know how to handle the application of national and international rules of reference within international arbitration.
Also learn to swiftly draft arbitration clauses and when and how to negotiate them.
Analyze all the steps of a customary international arbitration process and deal with an actual international arbitration case and solve the problems arising as the counselor to the parties to the arbitration.
Litigation & Alternative Dispute Resolution
The course focuses on the procedural aspects of dispute resolution in the US, whether by litigation before the courts or through contractual alternatives such as mediation and arbitration.
Negotiation
It combines theoretical instruction and practical exercises, as well as practice and development of negotiation capabilities and skills. This program has been designed so that participants may learn the “art of negotiation” as an effective tool that they will be able to use throughout their professional careers and personal lives.
It is an intensive seminar focusing on competitive and cooperative approaches to negotiation, whether to make a deal or settle a dispute.
Contract Law
US legal concepts governing the formation and enforcement of contracts, plus Uniform Commercial Code rules pertaining to sales, negotiable instruments and secured transactions.
Contract Drafting
The course focuses on enabling students to structure, negotiate pre-contractual agreements; how to analyze, assess and advise on the effect of both contractual clauses and how to clauses can be drafted or redrafted to leverage commercial objectives and manage and minimize risk of clients.
Antitrust
The course revolves around the structure of antitrust law as applied to various business contracts and practices, covering the different legal rules that govern horizontal and vertical contracts, monopolization, tying and mergers.
Introduction to Anglo-American Law
The course offers the fundamentals of the common-law legal system and its approach to the major practice areas of interest to transnational lawyers.
International Taxation
The course provides principles and underlying policies of the US tax system applicable to international practice, including jurisdiction, source of income, allocation and apportionment of deduction rules, taxation of foreign persons’ US income, sale of US real property interests, plus an introduction to foreign tax credits, the foreign earned income exclusion, anti-deferral mechanisms and international tax treaties.
Corporations
This course will emphasize the basic forms of doing business in the US, stressing solutions to issues faced by businesses, including standards of corporate governance.
Residential Option in Chicago
Students who can take a longer time away from work, and would like more time in a traditional classroom environment, may want to consider the Residential Option in Chicago. This option combines the first on campus and online period of the Traditional Executive Program with the entire Spring Semester (January-May) in residence at Northwestern Law. Under this option, participants may choose from among a wide variety of courses offered to residential JD and LLM students at Northwestern Law.
Candidates for the MSL degree who request the optional Spring Semester in Chicago will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Technology & Innovation
The purpose of this module will be to give IE students: (1) an awareness of new and emerging technologies (what they are, how they can be used, etc) and (2) some practice using an innovation methodology to think about how these technologies might be applied to their specific field (workspace design, construction, legal trials, legal discover, foreign service, NGO work, marketing, operations, …etc). This module will help give IE students an innovative edge consistent with our corporate values of innovation and entrepreneurship. Some of the technologies to be covered include: IoT/wearables/mobility, digital media/VR/AR, BlockChain/Cybersecurity, Cloud/SaaS, Industry 4.0, AI/Deep Learning, Web 3.0, Digital Transformation mehods, and others.