Degree Requirements

Additional Rules and Requirements

General LLM Degree Requirements and Policies

Office of Graduate Affairs - LLM Degree Requirements

Credit Load

Full-Time Status

Full-time students may request via a Credit Load Permission form to take fewer than 11 or more than 15 credits in a semester, but may not exceed a total of 30 credits in fall and spring. The Law School requires full-time students to register for at least 10 credits per semester in fall and spring. Return the form to the Graduate Tax Office for approval. 

Part-Time Status

Part-time students may register for a maximum of six credits in a semester. student may request permission to register for more than six credits in a semester via a Credit Load Permission form. Return the form to the Graduate Tax Office for approval. 

Half-Time Status

Students seeking federal student loans to finance their education generally need to be enrolled in at least five credits in order to maintain “half-time” status for federal loan eligibility. There are other requirements for loan eligibility, of course: US Citizenship (Or US Perm. Resident with a Green Card), having a social security number, having filled out a FAFSA (aid application), enrollment in a degree program, satisfactory progress, etc.   

Federal rules (34 CFR 668.2(b), defining “half-time student”) state that half-time status can be granted at half of whatever credit load is deemed to be full-time status. For both visa and financial aid purposes, while the standard full-time credit load for the 24 credit LLM program is 12 credits in each semester, we can allow students in our full-time program to enroll in as few as nine credits and as many as 15 credits and remain full-time. (As a practical matter, most full-time students prefer to have a more even workload spread over two semesters.) Thus, half-time status is deemed to be half of nine credits, or 4.5 credits. We do not have any half-credit tax classes, so half-time status is effectively five credits.

 

Half-time status typically entails being eligible for less in aid than students who are in full-time status (nine to fifteen credits).

 

Half-Time Enrollment Equivalency

In some cases we can award “half-time equivalency" when a student takes fewer than five credits in a semester. NYU policies state “Limited financial aid may be available to students with posted equivalencies. Cost of attendance for students with equivalencies is based upon living and miscellaneous expenses and not tuition and fees.”

 

NYU places authority for the determination of half-time equivalency within the academic department, which in the case of a graduate tax student would be determined by the Graduate Tax Program. Per NYU’s policy, “Graduate students may be eligible for a half-time or full-time equivalency, based upon the determination of their academic department, even if they are not enrolled for actual credits.”

 

Mostly, the definition of half or full-time status is based on the number of credits one is registered for, but there are other academic activities or factors which can be taken into account.

 

The federal definition of half-time status relates to academic workload in part, which is formally defined in the definition of a full-time program. 34 CFR 668.2(b), defining “full-time student,” states “The student's workload may include any combination of courses, work, research, or special studies that the institution considers sufficient to classify the student as a full-time student.” 

 

What We Can Consider

Consistent with other schools at NYU, the following criteria can be taken into account:

• Final semester of the program: A student who is completing their last semester and needs fewer than five credits to graduate.
• Finishing up another course: You are completing an incomplete (IC) or Excused (EXC) course or paper from a prior semester, are currently registered for additional credits, and the total number of credits (both incomplete and the registered credits) is five or more. Usually this includes auditing the course lectures while completing the academic work.
• Summer Session: We offer a condensed summer session which is typically taught on an abbreviated time frame, sometimes seven times less time between classes than we would normally have for very dense subjects. We do consider the workload in relation to timing as well.

• A portion of credit for a class which is being audited. With permission, it is possible to audit a course, on campus or online. We do limit the number of courses which can be audited each semester.  We have two ways to audit a class: official and unofficial/informal. An official audit appears on your transcript, ultimately earning a grade of “R” and entails formal registration and incurs tuition and fee charges. However, it is also possible to request an unofficial/informal audit in a semester in which you are enrolled in a degree program and taking other classes for credit. (Professor permission is necessary for in-person classes.) This entails being added to a course website and either attending a class in person or by watching course videos. This does not appear on the transcript and does not incur tuition and fee charges. We can track attendance for online classes, but faculty in on campus classes would not automatically record the attendance of auditors. If there is some tracking of attendance, then near the end of the semester we can issue an “advisor notation” which appears in our student records but not on the transcript. With the time spent attending or viewing the lectures recorded, we can include half of the course credit load as time spent on academic activities when calculating a student’s academic load.

   

  In our estimation of time spent on unregistered academic activities, we take several documented factors into account: we teach using the problem method which requires additional work out of class for even auditing a course; many areas of tax law are highly interdependent and require concurrent cross-subject study; and our program objectively fits far more material into each credit than is typical in similar programs. There is significant additional work beyond class time which is required to grasp the cross references within title 26 of the US code and the associated regulations, revenue rulings, revenue procedures, case law, unpublished administrative materials, etc., whether a student is auditing or taking a class for credit. 

   

  That said, we did not feel that an auditor would spend the same amount of time as a student preparing for an exam. Thus, we conservatively limited this allocation of equivalency for auditing to half of the normal credit allocation.  We will typically consider awarding equivalency for up to half of the credit audited. For example, if a student audits a two credit class and watches 80% or more of the videos (typically 13 classes), we might consider one additional credit equivalency.  (Our attendance policy requires 80% of classes to be viewed/attended.)  If the student were to instead only watch 40% of the videos for that class, we might consider a half-credit of equivalency. We will typically limit these audit-based equivalency credits to 1.5 credits per semester. (e.g., half of a three-credit course)

   

Other Considerations

We may not always grant half-time equivalency and reserve the right to judge each request for equivalency in light of the totality of the student's program of study and the rigor of their approach. For example, we would not allow a student to gain equivalency by auditing the same (or similar) course more than once, or by auditing a different version of a class they have already completed (absent a big change in the law which necessitates a mulligan), nor would we grant equivalency for a separate section of a class they are currently taking.

Transfer Credit

Transfer credits are treated as elective non-tax courses, even if they are on a tax law subject. Requests to take a course for transfer credit may be denied, for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, how long ago they were taken, format (i.e., no correspondence or undergraduate courses), etc. Up to four transfer credits may be approved by the vice dean and faculty director. We cannot award transfer credits for coursework which was already used towards another completed degree program, such as tax credits taken during a JD program. However, we can award advanced standing for tax courses taken by JD or visiting students at NYU Law, subject to restrictions.

Research

Directed Research

While there is no writing requirement for the LLM (in Taxation), students interested in writing a substantial paper while they are at NYU School of Law under the supervision of a faculty member are encouraged to register for up to two credits of directed research. Any of our full-time faculty can be approached to sponsor research. Often students first check informally to see if a professor feels that they have time in their schedule during a given semester and also that the topic is a good fit. If so, then the student would submit to the professor a more formal 2000 word proposal specifying the number of credits they are seeking, the paper topic, format, etc. If the professor approves, the student should follow the Law School instructions on How to Register for Directed Research. 

 

Research Assistants

Additionally, many members of the tax faculty ask students to assist them in conducting research. Students typically work 10-15 hours per week depending on the needs of the faculty member. Research assistants are paid on an hourly basis. Interested students should check with the Office of Career Services regarding available openings. Alternatively, students should feel free to approach professors directly about their research needs.

Online Courses

The Graduate Tax Program offers asynchronous, prerecorded, online courses. Our faculty have a rule that requires full-time students to take on-campus courses to maximize faculty-student interaction. Thus, online courses are generally limited to enrollment by our part-time students unless the course is not otherwise offered on campus during the current academic year. Our online classes are either recorded in a prior semester (in a classroom or studio setting), with all videos immediately available at the beginning of a semester, or they are being recorded in the current semester as the class meets each week. International Tax I , for example, is recorded in the classroom each fall semester. Full-time students should register for the on-campus section of a course and are expected to attend each class in person, even if there are class recordings available. Students cannot substitute watching a class online for attending and participating in class, absent a compelling reason, such as illness.

 

Traditionally with our online classes, all students (on campus and online) prepare for class by completing the same problem sets, take the same exam, and are graded on the same grading curve.

 

Note that students studying on an F-1 visa or hoping to use the LLM to qualify for the bar exam historically have been limited to enrollment in a single online course per semester under visa regulations and are unable to count online courses for the bar exam. The regulations for J visa holders do not explicitly allow for any online study. Finally, students whose first degree in law was from outside the US and may not be able to use online courses to qualify for the NY bar exam under section 520.6 of the bar examiners rules.  

 

Online Attendance

For part-time students taking asynchronous courses, there are often two points in the semester when a part-time student must be caught up with watching classes. Besides those two points, there is flexibility as to when part-time students watch the class videos. (Again, we are referring to pre-recorded, or asynchronous classes.)  As long as students in the online asynchronous section meet the attendance deadlines, they can watch the videos on the weekends, at night, in the morning, a half hour at a time, an hour at a time, etc. We often film multi-hour classes in one hour segments.

Online Courses, Residency, and Professional Licensure

Our part-time tax degree and certificate programs permit students to complete some or all of the requirements via online instruction. Visit our Residency website for more information on online courses, residency, and professional licensure. 

Foreign-Trained Attorneys and the New York Bar Examination

Students in the LLM in International Taxation program (ITP), and some of our students in our LLM in Taxation programs, have already received their first law degree outside of the U.S. These students are often interested in sitting for the New York bar exam. The topic of bar exam eligibility is complex, and can depend on one's prior legal education. The first step is to ask the New York Board of Law Examiners to review your educational credentials to find out if you can use an LLM to qualify to sit for the bar exam. We advise you to read about the requirements on NY Bar Exam Rules for Foreign-Trained Students and review the Historical List of Classes That Meet the Requirements of Rule 520.6(b)(3)(d). 

 

Both the LLM in Taxation and the LLM in International Taxation can be structured to satisfy the curricular requirements under Rule 520.6 to sit for the bar exam for many attorneys (again, this is a complex issue, so please do read our resources to see how the rules apply to your situation). ITP students receive a detailed memo during summer registration which offers suggested courses to meet both their degree requirements and those of the bar exam. Foreign-trained attorneys in the LLM in Taxation program should reach out to John Stephens, director of the Graduate Tax Program, to plan a set of courses that will satisfy the bar exam requirements. Keep in mind that there are additional requirements after one has passed the bar exam to actually become licensed, including passing the MPRE (multistate professional responsibility exam), "character and fitness" review, the section 520.16 requirement to perform pro bono work, and the section 520.18 requirement to work in a law office or to have previously worked in a law office to satisfy the "skills competency and professional values" requirements. The bar examiners have issued an FAQ to answer some questions about the recent section 520.18 skills competency requirement. Many students in our international tax program have prior legal experience in their home jurisdiction, and thus may be able to satisfy the section 520.18 requirement with this experience. Note that the coursework taken to satisfy section 520.6 does not satisfy the “pathway 1” option for section 520.18. Students planning to sit for the bar exam in NY on the basis of an LLM degree should not take any online classes.