The Business Law specialization is designed to allow students to focus in one of four tracks: business law, bankruptcy, securities regulation, and taxation. Approximately 70 courses and seminars are offered in the specialization. The four tracks are designed to offer guidance to students in course selection, as well as highlight the specialization’s curricular strengths. The advanced curricula include courses covering a wide variety of legal and business issues, ranging from regulation of markets to the design of business transactions. The Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy prepares students for outstanding careers and leadership in business law; as well as in business, the nonprofit sector, and philanthropy. The institute simultaneously serves as a dynamic hub of research and strategy for practitioners, scholars, and experts across a variety of disciplines.
UCLA School of Law is the only American law school to offer an advanced curriculum that fosters students’ systematic and rigorous study in the area of critical race studies. With many faculty members who have been instrumental in pioneering and advancing critical race theory, the Critical Race Studies specialization is essential to promoting insightful, intelligent public conversation about race relations. It is appropriate for law students who seek advanced study and/or practice in race and the law, critical race theory, civil rights, public policy, and other legal practice areas that are likely to involve working with racial minority clients and communities or working to combat racial inequality.
The International and Comparative Law program is one of the best in the nation. An expansive law faculty, course offerings, colloquia and symposia, student-edited journals, externships, foreign exchange offerings, and a broad community of interested students from around the world constitute a rich milieu in which to learn about the field. The International and Comparative Law specialization builds on these strengths, and directs students to coursework that may range from international business to comparative constitutional law to international human rights.
The Law and Sexuality specialization builds on the role of the school as a leader in the field of sexual orientation and gender identity law and scholarship. The goal of the specialization is to expand the quality and extent of legal knowledge and public discourse on issues related to sexuality and law. It is affiliated with the Williams Institute, a national think tank dedicated to conducting rigorous, independent research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. Students can take classes offered by faculty members and scholars associated with the institute, and participate in a range of institute activities including the speaker series and annual conference, moot court competition, and the Dukeminier Awards journal. Staff from the institute work with LLM students to secure internships in the Los Angeles area and to establish connections between LLM students and international experts and organizations working in their geographic or topic area. The specialization involves coursework on comparative and/or international law with focus on sexuality issues.
Los Angeles is the center of the entertainment industry. The specialization offers the most comprehensive, advanced, and innovative approach to the study of entertainment and media law in the world. Students who fulfill the requirements have a solid grounding in the law, custom, theory, and policy in the motion picture, television, music, and other industries involved in creative and artistic matters. The program also prepares students who choose to work in nonprofit institutions, government, or academia in the area of entertainment, media, and intellectual property law.
Exploring the proper role of the law in creating and sustaining a just society, the Public Interest Law specialization strives to offer its students an innovative and intellectually ambitious curriculum that prepares them to engage in sophisticated representation of traditionally underserved clients and interests. The specialization, one of the nation’s top such programs, has a competitive admissions process. Students represent a broad range of political and ideological perspectives. Graduates’ impact is far reaching as they work on a broad range of social justice issues such as women’s rights; immigrants’ rights; poverty; health-care access; international human rights; criminal justice; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer rights; and more.
