Registration and Attendance Requirements
All LL.M. degree candidates must register for nine to 10 credits in the fall term, eight to 10 credits in the spring term, and at least two credits in the winter term. All degree candidates must also regularly attend all courses and seminars in which they are registered. Failure to register for any term or attend classes on a regular basis will preclude eligibility for graduation. In some cases, specific credit minimums may apply for visa purposes. Questions should be directed to the Graduate Program. All LL.M. candidates are required to remain in residence during each term.
S.J.D. candidates in residence must follow check-in and financial clearance procedures stipulated by the Registrar’s Office and the Graduate Program. All first-year candidates must regularly attend all courses and seminars taken during the first year.
Class Attendance and Participation
Class work is essential to the educational program at the Law School. Regular, in-person attendance at classes and clinics, participation in class and clinic work, and compliance with rules and norms for classrooms and clinics, are expected of all students. In the case of substantial delinquency in attendance, unsatisfactory performance of clinic responsibilities, or failure to comply with classroom rules and norms, the Law School may, after written notice, involuntarily withdraw a student from the course or clinic in question.
Students who believe they need to miss classes for an extended period of time must speak with the Assistant Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies or the Dean of Students, who can assist with such situations and can help students comply with the Law School’s attendance policy and related academic policies, and direct students to applicable resources as necessary. In most cases, a student’s absence from all of their classes for more than two weeks will be cause for a leave of absence and administrative withdrawal from all courses. The permissible period of absence for short courses and winter term courses will be less than two weeks.
Students will not receive credit for courses (including courses taken through cross-registration), clinics, seminars, or reading groups with meeting times that overlap in whole or in part. Students must also allow for sufficient travel time between classes. Students may not make arrangements with faculty members to arrive late or leave early from a class.
Students anticipating missing class may be eligible to receive audio recordings for certain types of absences pursuant to the Law School’s Class Recording Policy, which is available in Section XIII(F) of the Handbook of Academic Policies.
Absences due to Religious Beliefs
In accordance with Massachusetts law, any student who is unable, because of their religious beliefs, to attend classes or to participate in any examination, study or work requirement on a particular day shall be excused from any such examination or study or work requirement, and shall be provided with an opportunity to make up such examination, study or work requirement which they may have missed because of such absence on any particular day; provided, however, that such makeup examination or work shall not create an unreasonable burden upon the Law School. No fees of any kind shall be charged by the Law School for making such opportunity available to the student, and no adverse or prejudicial effects shall result to any student because they avail themselves of this opportunity. (See Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 151C, Section 2B.)
Course Selection and Academic Evaluation
Subject to limited exceptions, graduate students are eligible to enroll in most courses and seminars at the law school. Admission to courses and seminars requiring special permission from the instructor is expected to be based on similar criteria as those applied to J.D. students.
Academic performance by graduate students in courses and seminars and on written work will be evaluated on the same basis as performance by J.D. students at the law school. In addition, graduate students are required to meet all academic requirements of the Graduate Program.
Examinations
Students are reminded that exchange of information, collaboration, or communication of any kind during an examination is not permitted at the law school. Consequences for such collaboration may range from disallowance of the examination to suspension or expulsion from the law school.
Students who arrive late for their exams will not receive compensatory time to complete their exams. Late exam cases (including late arrivals to an in-class exam) will be referred to the Administrative Board.
Students who fail to appear for a scheduled exam for a course in which they are enrolled may be subject to disciplinary action by Harvard Law School.
More complete information regarding exam policies is found in the “Examinations” section of the Harvard Law School Handbook of Academic Policies 2026-2027 and in the law school’s Standing Policies of the Administrative Board Concerning Exam Administration.
LL.M. Written Work Deadlines
Deadlines for registering for and submitting a final copy of the paper an LL.M. student writes in satisfaction of the Written Work Requirement are listed in the “Written Work Registration Deadlines” and “Deadlines for Submission of Law School Work” sections of the Harvard Law School Handbook of Academic Policies 2026-2027.
Grades and Degree Completion
All Harvard Law School academic work — with the exception of specified courses offered on a credit/fail basis — will be graded Honors, Pass, Low Pass, or Fail (H, P, LP, or F).
In order to be eligible for the LL.M. degree, LL.M. candidates must complete at least 23 credits of work (including course work and written work) graded Low Pass (LP) or higher; of those 23 credits, no fewer than three must be graded Pass (P) or higher.
Students failing to meet minimum grade requirements may be allowed, by decision of the Graduate Committee, to undertake substitute work, take a different examination in the same course, or retake courses within the next academic year following the end of their LL.M. year. All additional work must be completed no later than 12 months after the end of the year in which the student matriculated in the LL.M. program. Outside of the foregoing circumstance, however, all work must be completed within a single academic year consistent with the fact that the LL.M. is a single academic year degree program.
LL.M. students must complete degree requirements for the LL.M. within 36 months of first matriculating at the law school. A leave of absence will not extend the period for completing degree requirements. Further information on Leaves and Withdrawals is found in the applicable section of the Harvard Law School Handbook of Academic Policies 2026-2027, herein incorporated by reference.
S.J.D. candidates taking courses for credit must receive a minimum grade of Pass (P) in any given course offered at Harvard Law School.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is, in brief, the using of the ideas or words of another as one’s own. In the United States, rules relating to plagiarism are very strict, and may not have exact counterparts in some other countries. The issue is essentially one of academic and intellectual honesty.
Specifically, all work submitted by a student for any academic or nonacademic exercise is expected to be the student’s own work. In the preparation of their work, students should always take great care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources. The term “sources” includes not only published or computer-accessed primary and secondary material, but also information and opinions gained directly from other people.
The responsibility for learning the proper forms of citation lies with the individual student. Quotations must be properly placed within quotation marks and must be fully cited. In addition, all paraphrased material must be completely acknowledged. Whenever ideas or facts are derived from a student’s reading and research, the sources must be indicated. In case of doubt, students should acknowledge, in the text or in a footnote, the source of an idea or the source of language other than their own. Even where a source is cited, lengthy paraphrasing should be avoided where there would be ambiguity about how much of the text actually incorporates the ideas of others.
In addition, the amount of collaboration with others that is permitted in the completion of work can vary, depending upon the policy set by the head of the course or the supervisor of a particular exercise. Students should assume that collaboration in the completion of work is prohibited unless explicitly permitted, and students should acknowledge any collaboration and its extent in all submitted work.
Students who are in any doubt about the preparation of their work should consult the appropriate instructor, supervisor, or administrator before it is prepared or submitted. Students who submit work that is not their own without clear attribution of all sources, even if the omission is inadvertent, will be subject to disciplinary action. Several law school students have been cited for plagiarism in recent years.
The cases described below should be viewed as illustrative only. Actual practices that may constitute plagiarism may differ, and actual penalties imposed may be more or less severe than those described here:
- A student who had plagiarized through paraphrasing the ideas of another throughout most of a seminar paper was suspended for one semester. The student argued that the standards applied to acknowledging sources in this country were far more stringent than those applied in the student’s own country, and therefore the plagiarism was accidental. Although the student’s argument may have been factually true, the Administrative Board found that the student had in fact plagiarized and that this could not and would not be tolerated. At the time of the suspension the student was completing the spring semester of the LL.M. program. The student received no credit for the entire semester. Under the terms of the suspension, this student had to re-apply to the LL.M. program in order to regain admission. The readmission was denied.
- A student submitted a short paper that consisted entirely of material taken from a published article by another author. The material was not placed in quotation marks, nor was the article cited. Although the paper was one of several short, ungraded papers submitted in that course, the student received no credit for the course and was suspended for a semester.
- A student had graduated with the LL.M. degree. In time, it was brought to the attention of the student’s former supervisor that the student’s LL.M. paper had been plagiarized. The student’s degree was rescinded.
Use of AI in Academic Work and Exams
In general, in completing coursework and exams, one may rely on and engage with artificial intelligence applications (including ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools, including ones embedded in other software and services, such as Microsoft Office’s Co-Pilot) in the same way in which one may rely on and engage with: (a) other persons and (b) non-artificial intelligence technologies. Thus, if a student uses an artificial intelligence application in a manner or to an extent that would constitute plagiarism if the student were engaging with another human or technology, such use is prohibited. By contrast, if a student uses an artificial intelligence application in a manner or to an extent that would constitute appropriate research conduct if the student were consulting with another person or using a non-AI application, such use is permitted.
For example:
- While preparing for an exam, a student would be permitted to email another person about the subject matter of the exam and/or ask that person to explain a relevant concept. Similarly, while studying for an exam, a student would be permitted to submit a prompt to an artificial intelligence application about topics or concepts relevant to the exam. In contrast, a student would not be permitted to ask either another person or an artificial intelligence application to pre-write text for the student and then incorporate that text into their exam.
- During the administration of an exam, a student would not be permitted to email another person about the subject matter of the exam and/or ask another person to explain a relevant concept. Similarly, during the administration of an exam, a student is not permitted to submit a prompt to an artificial intelligence application about the subject matter of the exam and concepts relevant thereto.
- When writing a paper, unless the instructor has authorized some form of co-authorship, a student would not be permitted to email another person and ask that person to write part of the paper for the student (regardless of whether the student copies what the person wrote verbatim, paraphrases it, or uses only part of it). Similarly, a student is not permitted to incorporate the output from an artificial intelligence application into the student’s paper, except insofar as the instructor has authorized the output to be cited as a source with attribution.
- When writing a paper, a student would be permitted to have an email exchange with another person about the student’s ideas, as long as the final work product that the student submits constitutes the student’s own work, representing the student’s own effort and original ideas. Similarly, when writing a paper, a student would be permitted to submit a prompt to an artificial intelligence application while considering an idea, as long as the final work product that the student submits constitutes the student’s own work. In both instances, any text or ideas copied from any source should be properly quoted and cited, and any output from an artificial intelligence application should only be used as a source with the instructor’s authorization.
- When writing a paper, a student would be permitted to ask another person to read a draft of the paper and make suggestions about the student’s spelling, grammar, or word choice, provided the other person did not redraft portions of the text. Similarly, when writing a paper, a student may rely upon artificial intelligence tools (and, for that matter, for non-AI tools such as BriefCatch or the “Editor” or spelling and grammar correction functions in Microsoft Word) to perform the same types of functions.
An instructor may provide, for their course, rules different from those stated in this policy, as long as the rules are (1) described in writing and (2) communicated to all students in the course (for instance, stated in the course syllabus). If not expressly permitted in writing by the instructor, any use of AI in a manner or to an extent contrary to the above policy will be considered academic dishonesty and may subject the student to disciplinary action.
As with more traditional sources, students should assume that collaboration in the completion of written work is prohibited unless explicitly permitted. Students who are in any doubt about the preparation of their work should consult the appropriate instructor, supervisor, or administrator before it is prepared or submitted.