The Best Extracurriculars for a Competitive Harvard LL.M. Application

Introduction

I often get asked to assess someone’s profile and predict their chances of admission to a prestigious LL.M. program like Harvard. My answer is always the same: it’s very difficult to say.

With 1,600 applicants annually and 180 spots to distribute, Harvard LL.M. program has about 11% acceptance rate. There are multiple factors influencing admission. Your profile is a big one but it's only one of many in a larger decision-making process. Other crucial elements include your writing — your essays, such as the LL.M personal statement and any required legal writing samples — and the overall LL.M. applicant pool. (Un)fortunately, luck plays a role too, as it does in so many aspects of life.

My approach to admissions is about helping you uncover and highlight the valuable things you’ve already done rather than trying to fit an imaginary “ideal” mold. My experiences as an LL.M. applicant, a multiple-time admissions committee member, and an expert in this field is that there is no single “ideal” Harvard LL.M. profile, only strong and weak ones.

The next logical question, then, is what makes a strong candidate?

1 Harvard LL.M.: The Basics

The foundation of your LL.M. application includes your academic degrees, grades, and the English proficiency. These are the baseline requirements. While for a school like Harvard they do need to meet a certain threshold, they don’t always have to be stellar. Admissions committees evaluate applicants holistically and see you as a person, not just a collection of documents.

2 Harvard LL.M.: Professional and Academic Activities

Beyond academics, what you’ve done outside the classroom matters. There’s no single activity that guarantees admission. It depends on where you're from and what opportunities you’ve had access to. What the LL.M. admissions committee really looks for is whether you have gone beyond what was merely required. The how is up to you.

In this post, I’ll walk you through the activities I had on my own Harvard LL.M. CV — things that I believe demonstrated my passion for law and contributed to my admission. Please keep in mind that this isn’t a template. It’s just what I had. You don’t need to have these exact experiences. You have your own story, and it will be different. If you’re unsure how to analyze your profile, please read on how to evaluate your LL.M. admission chances.

2.1. Publications

During my first four years of university, I attended around 11 student law conferences. They were one of the few things you could do in law school, and I was desperately looking to do something interesting. A friend who led our law faculty’s student scientific society invited me to join, and I soon became involved in organizing some conferences and presenting at others.

For each conference, I had to find a legal issue, identify and study relevant literature, write a report, and present it. Some reports were theoretical, while others connected legal theory with practice. A few were just really fun — one explored agency and representation relationships in the Harry Potter universe, and another, presented at an intellectual property rights conference called Baba Yaga (named after a Russian fairy tale character), was themed around the resale rights of artists (droit de suite).

These student conferences awarded prizes for best reports — such as a publication in a peer-reviewed journal or law books. This way, I had several high-quality peer-reviewed publications even before graduating from law school.

Later, during my internship in Brussels at the Association for International Arbitration, I co-authored a policy paper on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), wrote several legal commentaries on current court judgments, and helped organize a conference on antitrust issues in arbitration. I applied for that internship primarily to find an entry point to international arbitration in Europe but unexpectedly, the work I did there laid the foundation for many of my academic endeavors.

By the time I applied for my LL.M., I had 11 publications on my Harvard LL.M. CV. I’d say it’s a bit extreme, and you absolutely don’t need that many, especially if you are not an academic and not planning on becoming one.

In my view, if you have one publication, it can already be an excellent demonstration of your intellectual rigor and curiosity.

2.2. Translations

I also had a section on academic translations on my Harvard LL.M. CV. It may sound unfamiliar, so I'll explain.

At the Lomonosov Moscow State University, comparative law was heavily emphasized. We never studied Russian law in isolation or as strictly 'law on the books'. Rather, we studied a particular legal problem and solutions to it as developed in various legal traditions. This focus became even stronger as a major private law reform was happening at the time, and legal scholars sought foreign (mostly Western) perspectives to modernize the national civil code.

In this context, translating foreign legal texts into Russian to make them available to a broader audience was an important academic contribution to the dissemination of knowledge. For instance, a friend of mine translated the criminal procedure codes of multiple German-speaking countries into Russian. I participated in translating Austria’s consumer credit law, as there was an ongoing reform of Russia’s consumer credit law, and the Austrian example was one of the models considered. That project mattered so much to me that I asked the professor who had commissioned the translation to mention it in his recommendation letter for my LL.M. applications.

I also translated two academic articles — one on the general theory of contractual obligations (English to Russian) and another on the securities law (German to Russian). Back then, AI translation tools didn’t exist, so this work required expertise in legal terminology and a high-level mastery of the source languages. In addition, none of that work was paid, and I did it on a sheer enthusiasm for law. It was deeply meaningful for me, and I wanted to have it seen and appreciated by the members of the Harvard LL.M. admissions committee.

2.3. Memberships

I listed several memberships on my Harvard LL.M. CV, including Young ICCA, the International Chamber of Commerce Young Arbitrators Forum (ICC YAF), Young International Arbitration Group (LCIA YIAG), and the Youth Human Rights Movement.

As a student, I was very interested in joining international lawyer communities but didn’t quite know how to engage with them, as they weren’t well-represented in Russia. The one exception was ELSA (European Law Students’ Association), where I attended a summer school on human rights in Zadar, Croatia, and made a lot of friends.

Anyway, the membership section of my LL.M. CV was brief, and I am not sure if and how it affected my admission to Harvard LL.M. My main goal was to demonstrate that I was committed to building relationships with other lawyers, including and especially across borders.

2.4. Competitions and Scholarships

Throughout law school, I participated in law competitions, similar to high school Olympiads that I described in detail in my other posts, including on my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B. I competed in and won the Olympiad’s private law section, which involved a specialized oral examination on multiple aspects of private law. I noted the prizes I received in the “Achievements” section of my Harvard LL.M. CV (current named “Prizes, Awards, Funding”).

2.5. Distinctions for Writing

At Lomonosov Moscow State University, I did a lot of writing. Every year, I had to submit a course paper (minimum 25 pages, though mine were usually 40–60 pages). The final-year graduation thesis had a 50-page requirement (I wrote 80 🙈).

Multiple papers I wrote received a distinction. My second-year course paper won a prize, and my graduation thesis was commended by the examination committee. I included these distinctions on my Harvard LL.M. CV as well.

I didn’t list high school awards, though I had one from the essay competition on human rights (and an MP3 player as a prize). Later on, both my Harvard LL.M. thesis and my first doctoral dissertation received prizes.

I’m sorry if it sounds like bragging. 🙈 I just love academic writing. It's a bit of a torture, but I really do. And because I love I, I do a lot of it. And because I do a lot of it, I got really good at it.

2.6. Moot Courts

Moot courts are one of the most common ways to distinguish yourself in an LL.M. application. I’ve written extensively about utilizing this experience in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B, so I won’t go into detail here.

One thing I will say: Your access to moot courts will depend on your circumstances, but moot courts don’t necessarily require a lot of institutional support. It can be a bottom-up initiative. For instance, my participation in the Concours Charles-Rousseau, a French-speaking moot, happened because a friend took the initiative to organize it at our faculty — no one had done it before her.

Even if you don’t manage to raise funding to go abroad to compete (I hope you do, though!), doing a moot court in your home country, including an online one, is a viable alternative. It can already help you showcase your skills, enthusiasm, and potential. So if you don’t have fancy law firms funding your team, please don’t despair. There are things you can do, and your ability to go to a prestigious university for an LL.M. should not depend on your ability to afford to go compete in Vienna or Washington D.C.

final thoughts

The main takeaway I’d like to leave you with is: Work with what you have.

It’s easy to believe that getting into Harvard LL.M. requires private tutors, elite schools, and an expensive, pre-planned trajectory. And for many people, it's true. But I didn’t have any of that. More importantly, I didn’t even realize that not having those things could be a disadvantage — and, ironically, that turned out to be one of my biggest advantages.

I enjoyed being a lawyer and studying law. I participated in what I had access to.

From my experience, many LL.M. applicants often have plenty of strengths; but they don’t recognize the value in what they’ve already done. And while building a profile from scratch can be a valid path, my approach is to help you see the beauty in what you already have and make it shine.

And yes, you also need luck. But then again, don’t we all?

If you’re looking for more guidance, I've created a comprehensive course, Harvard State of Mind on Demand, to guide LL.M. applicants through developing all major components of a successful LL.M. application, including personal statements, CVs, and recommendations. It incorporates the insights I learnt during my time at Harvard from the law school's career office.

If you'd like a personalized review of your CV or help getting started, please read about my approach and fill out a short application form.

Hope this helps and good luck! ☺️