How to Successfully Apply for LL.M. at Cambridge: My Experience

Introduction

Several years ago, I applied for an LL.M. program and received admission to four universities. One of the offers I got was from Cambridge. I've written about my applications to Harvard, NYU, and the Master’s in International Dispute Settlement (MIDS) in Geneva before here. In this post, I’d like to talk about my approach to the Cambridge LL.M. application.

Let's dive in 😊

Required Documents for the Cambridge LL.M.

The Cambridge LL.M. application requires several key documents:

• CV
• Reasons for Applying Essay
• Recommendations
• Proof of English proficiency (I scored 7.5 on IELTS)

One thing that stood out for me was the college system. You had to indicate a college preference on the application form, and it was incredibly hard for me to figure it out. In the end, I chose my college purely based on available scholarships. If you’re struggling with this too—I feel compassion for you but don’t have the magic bullet;(

To stay organized, I used a simple one-page Word checklist with all the required documents and their status, color-coded. This was helpful to track my progress.

I applied to the general LL.M. program (not the MCL - Master's of Corporate Law), which had an early deadline, similar to top U.S. schools. In my year, the deadline was December 3rd, so I started months in advance.

As of now, the program receives around 1,400 applications for 190 spots, which means the competition is roughly 7 applicants per spot. Eligibility criteria are a bit stricter than U.S. schools. Cambridge requires a first-class honors degree from a U.K. university or its equivalent, whereas U.S. universities often adopt a holistic approach without hard cutoffs for grades.

Cambridge LL.M. Essay on the Reasons for Applying

One of the most important parts of the Cambridge LL.M. application is the “Reasons for Applying” essay, which has a limit of 5,000 characters.

My Argument for Pursuing an LL.M. at Cambridge

The essay centered on my desire to contribute to the reform of Russian private law. It was structured as follows:

1. After the dissolution of the USSR, Russian private law had to be built almost from scratch.
2. Many legal concepts were indiscriminately borrowed from English common law.
3. To effectively reform Russian private law, I needed an advanced understanding of common law.
4. Cambridge offered the perfect LL.M. program, combining world-class faculty and a focus on common law.

I also highlighted specific faculty members whose work I admired and from whom I hoped to learn, like Professor Richard Fentiman.

Cambridge LL.M. Career Plans Essay

The Cambridge LL.M. application also required a separate essay on career plans.

In this essay, I elaborated on a phenomenon unique to post-Soviet Russia: outsourcing of the major parts of the economy to English common law. I discussed how the private law reform initiated in 2008 didn’t address the problem, as more legal transplants were adopted without critical evaluation.

I outlined my career goals:

• To contribute to the development of Russian private law by joining the national Ministry of Justice or Ministry of Economic Development.
• To keep working as an academic, educating young law students about existing legal challenges and equipping them with the tools they need to drive future reforms.

Cambridge LL.M. Letters of Recommendations

My recommendations followed a similar path to what I’ve described regarding other applications like Harvard, . In addition to the two recommenders I had for MIDS Geneva application, I had a third recommender who was my lecturer in public international law and also coached our team for the Concours Charles Rousseau.

I asked him to emphasize several points in his letter:

• When doing Concours Charles Rousseau, I was the youngest on the team yet exhibited the same level of commitment as others.
• The difficulties we faced accessing pertinent literature on international investment law (this is a recurrent theme in my essays and writing in general). There was literally close to nothing at the university library, and procuring resources was one of the major challenges. Nonetheless, we overcame that and still managed to write strong memos.
• Oral pleadings overlapped with the national finals of the law olympiad and I balanced double the workload and performed brilliantly, contributing to our team winning a Francophone organization’s prize. I still remember going to the finals in Moscow on April 25th, my 20th birthday, and the next morning flying out to Paris with my team to compete (also being in the middle of terrible spring allergies).
• My growth over the course of the competition - my last round was significantly better than my first, and it was incredibly important for me as I performed publicly for the first time in my third language. I specifically asked him to phrase it in comparative terms, mentioning that he'd never seen a student improve that fast.
• Finally, I asked him to comment on my overall growth over the course of working together for two years, culminating in my selection for the Jessup team, where we placed in the top 10 in Washington, D.C.

If you’d like to see an example of a letter of recommendation or learn how to draft one if your recommender asks, I have a full module on this in my Harvard State of Mind on Demand course.

Analysis and What I’d Do Differently

My essays were successful in the end but as I was re-reading their various drafts for this blog post, I spotted a bunch of issues. Thank goodness I reworked them before submitting, but I still wanted to share them here so that you could avoid them.

Mistake #1: Overuse of Quotes

My early essay drafts had so many quotes! I think one of the drafts contained four or five of them. 🙈 I remember feeling like I had to hide behind other people’s words. I felt that everything worthy of saying had already been said by other, more prominent people, and I should cite them first before I dare to speak up. I’ve since learned how to use quotes effectively (at the EUI, in our writing group, someone even called me the 'queen of quotes') - or not use them at all, but seeing these drafts reminded me I didn't start that way. 😉

Mistake #2: Generalized Statements

Reviewing my drafts, I noticed a tendency to use generalized, vague sentences. If you know my work, you know I preach specificity. Specificity is essential. It convinces the reader of the authenticity of your writing and shows that you’re drawing from your lived experience.

Here is an example of an ineffective generality:

Working in both state and private sectors and academia gave me different perspectives on the current state of Russian law.

Compare this to the final version I used, inter alia, in my Harvard application:

As I searched for a practical setting to suit me, I gathered experiences in the State Office for Registration and Noerr, the Association for International Arbitration and the Higher School of Economics. I worked for big companies and individuals, state authorities and international organizations. I dealt with large-scale mergers and small insurance cases, cross-border arbitrations and local regulatory issues. I spoke in English, German and French.

Significantly more compelling, isn't it?

Another generality from an early (very early!) draft:

I took part in all possible conferences and competitions believing that knowledge I get and people I meet are not just a page in my life, but rather a step to building something more important.

It was so uninformative that I discarded this part from the Cambridge essay entirely. However, I asked one of my recommenders to comment on this part of my life. Here is what he wrote:

Being interested in comparative studies, Ms Levina took part in numerous conferences, seminars and workshops both on national and international levels. I was the organizer of joint workshops of Moscow and Vienna universities and judged student works at a number of conferences and have seen Ms Levina deploying all kinds of intellectual curiosity: she not only used the networking opportunities of such events to its fullest and connected with people, but also worked on her topics with devotion and always delivered high-quality result.

He could have been even more specific and mention that a report of mine was recognized as one of the best at a student conference at the Lomonosov Moscow State University that he judged and that I later published it as a peer-reviewed article. But alas, not every accomplishment makes into application, and that's okay. There were other examples in the recommendation that spoke of the strength of my profile.

For my essay, I wrote a new part to add specificity, choosing to focus on only one competition that mattered to me the most:

At the time, I was coaching a team for the Concours Charles-Rousseau. I guided the work of my students, as they studied writings of prominent scholars and crafted their memorials. My goal was not only to help them master lawyering skills, but also learn about fundamental values of the law, professional integrity and teamwork, commitment and passion. I watched them becoming better persons and thus better lawyers. I came to understand F. Frankfurter’s words: “Law is what the lawyers are. And the law and lawyers are what the law schools make them” (Letter to Mr. Rosenwald – May 13, 1927).

Here is a variation of it that I wrote for another application:

I took these findings into my academic work with students. After graduating from the Moscow State University, I coached a team for the Concours Charles-Rousseau, student moot-court competition in international law. The competition takes place once a year and gathers French-speaking teams from all over the world. My task as a coach was to guide the work of my students as they prepared for the competition, helping them master the legal research and writing skills. Above all, however, my goal was to help them understand the diversity in the world, and how international law brings different nations together. When after months of preparation we got to the competition venue, I encouraged them to apply the same logic to the people and teams we met. Every year, Concours Charles-Rousseau was a true melting pot. There were competition regulars from France, Canada, Belgium, and Romania; occasionally visiting teams from Brazil and Argentina, Congo and Côte d’Ivoire, the United States and Russia, Greece, Colombia, Germany. It was a wonderful introduction to the concept of global citizenship. I remember the bonding my students experienced, the joy they showed after the conversations with other participants – the joy of dismissing the old stereotypes and discovering what’s universal and human, and what’s a cultural code. Each time after the competition, the world felt a little cosier than before.

You see how the specifics make the experience come alive?

Specifics are what helps your readers see that you really thought about your experience and you are coming from a position of emotional maturity, knowing when you've been and where you're headed.

Mistake #3: Writing a Treatise on the Importance of Your Subject

I wanted to convey my passion for law, especially private law. I was always fascinated by how private law helps structure horizontal relationships between people, and I felt compelled to translate it on paper but could not find the right words.

In one draft, I included this passage: “Private law, with its main goal to enable the realization of individual freedom, is one of the most important elements of a properly functioning society.”

It's not that I didn't understand that personal statements and motivation letters were supposed to be about me. I did. But I was convinced that as a person, I did not matter, especially compared to that big thing called 'law.' I thought the only thing that mattered were the improvements I was planning to enact, and so I talked a lot about them.

Again, I learned that it was a mistake - and I'm happy I learned that before I submitted my application to Cambridge. Motivation letters are supposed to be about you, not abstract ideas or the important of the law.

The Gates Cambridge Scholarship: Addressing the Leadership Potential

One of the major difficulties for me was addressing leadership. For the Gates Cambridge scholarship, leadership potential was one of the key criteria, and it took me a while to find a way to think about it.

Now, with the experience that I have, I see that even with an extremely limited set of tools I had at my disposal, I managed to do things in life that I could use to showcase my leadership potential. But at the time, I had so many years of being trained to perceive myself as small and insignificant, a result of severe parental neglect and societal conditioning, that it was probably one of the most significant obstacles in the application process that I ever faced.

Finding ways to articulate leadership without feeling like an imposter was painful, but ultimately, I found examples from my life:

• I initiated a pro bono practice at my firm, practice that didn’t exist before me.
• I coached a team for a French moot court and helped secure funding for their participation, even though we didn't have access to large institutional sponsors.
• As part of a research team, I developed recommendations for a financial market law reform in Russia.

What ultimately helped was stumbling upon a definition of leadership by A.V. Gordon, the author of MBA Admissions Strategy, as

The occasions when you've directed the outcome of a project or part of a project, or have been responsible for coordinating or motivating others.

It deeply resonated with me, as it went against the mainstream representation of leadership as exclusively attached to a particular title or a position. Rather, it suggested that leadership is about an approach, and can be exercised regardless of what you do, where you are on social or professional ladder, etc.

One of the personal mantras I follow in life and in applications is that nothing is ever wasted. My Gates Cambridge application is a perfect example. It ultimately didn't succeed but engaging with the theme of leadership, especially in the context of my own path as a lawyer occupied my mind so much that I decided to use that argument again, but in my Harvard application.

The ideas were already there, but I rewrote the argument from scratch and it became a success. You can read the final result here. I talk about the process behind it in more detail in the series of posts that starts with this one.

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I hope what I've shared helps you write your own winning application to Cambridge! I wish you best of luck and let me know how it goes ☺️

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