Harvard LLM Part A: Choosing a Legal Issue

Harvard LLM Part A: Choosing a Legal Issue

Choose a legal issue you can analyze within the space available, using sources you understand and a response you can question. Harvard requires substantive analysis beyond outlining a research proposal.

A subject can matter enormously and still make a poor short essay. The difficulty is usually deciding what to leave outside the question so that you can do something meaningful with the part that remains.

The LLM personal-statement guide covers the full application document. This page addresses the earlier decision: selecting a Part A issue and testing whether your proposed approach gives you an argument to develop.

Establish the task before choosing the headline

Harvard's 2027–28 LLM application instructions, checked September 16, 2026, limit the statement to 1,500 words, excluding citation-only footnotes. At least half belongs to Part A: an issue and substantive analysis of a theoretical framework or legal strategy. Part B concerns your educational and personal case.

Give each part room to do its job. Neither should quietly absorb the other.

Our recommendation is to choose a question with a defensible boundary before deciding how impressive the subject sounds. A fashionable topic with no clear dispute can leave you describing developments for most of the essay. A narrower issue you understand can give you room to propose a response, examine an objection and qualify your conclusion.

Test three candidate issues on paper

Instead of committing immediately, write brief notes on three possible issues. This is an original planning exercise, not Harvard's selection rubric.

Do not score these rows and assume the highest total identifies a winning topic. Use them to expose unfinished thinking. If you cannot explain what your proposed response changes, the problem is not yet a matter of sentence editing.

The strongest choice may come from coursework rather than practice. It may also differ from your most prestigious experience. Select the issue for what you can do with it, not for the employer or institution attached to its origin.

A constructed comparison: three possible topics

Imagine a lawyer considering three options. These are hypothetical planning cases, not legal advice or examples associated with admissions outcomes.

Option one is a worldwide problem. The applicant wants to discuss how technology is changing every aspect of access to justice. They have read widely but their notes contain several countries, different institutions and multiple proposed reforms. Each paragraph would need new context.

The next step is to narrow the question. Which institution, decision or competing principle do they understand well enough to examine? If no smaller question emerges, enthusiasm for the field is not sufficient preparation for this essay.

Option two comes from a seminar paper. The applicant studied an imagined administrative process: an agency provides reasons for a decision, but the affected person cannot identify which evidence mattered. Their narrow question is whether a useful explanation should primarily describe the governing criteria or connect those criteria to the decisive information. They can compare these approaches and test an objection concerning confidentiality. This is a hypothetical design question, not a claim about any jurisdiction's legal duties.

That gives them a plausible starting point. They still need to check the sources and develop their own response to the current prompt. Having previously written about a topic does not mean an old introduction already answers the application question.

Option three comes from a confidential matter. The applicant understands the problem well, but the proposed discussion relies on details they cannot appropriately share. Removing names would not remove the identifying combination of facts.

They should find another basis for the discussion or another issue. The guide to client confidentiality in law statements explains why changing a name is not a complete privacy solution. An application does not justify exposing information simply because it would make the essay more vivid.

On these facts, we would begin with option two. That recommendation changes if the applicant cannot explain the disagreement independently, or if a properly bounded version of option one offers a stronger argument.

Notice when your outline only promises analysis

A useful test is whether your essay delivers the reasoning it promises.

Compare these constructed outline fragments:

I will examine the competing approaches, identify their limitations and propose an improved framework.

I identify a particular assumption shared by the competing approaches, explain why it matters, and test whether a proposed alternative addresses the difficulty without creating a larger one.

The second fragment is still only an outline. Its value is that it names work the finished essay must actually perform. The eventual paragraphs need the real assumption, argument, support and difficulty. Replacing future tense with present tense will not supply them.

A useful diagnostic is to underline every promise to explore, investigate or consider. Then ask where the draft delivers on that promise. If the answer is always somewhere after the application essay ends, reconsider the structure.

This does not require pretending that a short essay settles the issue. A qualified conclusion can be more convincing than an oversized solution, provided the qualification follows from analysis rather than replacing it.

Let an objection change something

An objection should do more than demonstrate that you know another view exists. It should test an assumption, reveal a tradeoff or limit the circumstances in which your response works.

For example, your planning notes might initially propose a framework as broadly applicable. A serious objection may show that it depends on information unavailable in some settings. Your revised position might therefore be narrower: explain the condition, what follows when it is absent, and why the remaining claim is still worth making.

That movement gives the essay reasoning to show. Simply adding a paragraph beginning with “critics may argue” and then dismissing an implausibly weak criticism adds length without scrutiny.

Choose an objection you can represent fairly. Do not attribute a position to a scholar from a secondhand summary if you have not checked what they actually argue. Source accuracy is part of the work you must complete, not something an application-writing review can establish for you.

Does Part A have to match Part B?

The published instructions do not impose a separate requirement that both parts concern the same specialism. That absence is not evidence that every combination will communicate equally well.

Our editorial recommendation is to prefer a coherent relationship when it exists naturally. A problem from earlier study may illuminate what you want to investigate next. A different issue may demonstrate another sustained intellectual interest. Either way, you should understand why you chose it.

Do not manufacture a connection by changing the story of your experience. You also do not need to insert autobiographical explanations throughout the legal analysis just to prove that the two parts belong to one person.

If you already hold an advanced law degree, explaining the need for a second LLM is part of the personal case. It does not substitute for Part A's analytical task. Similarly, another university's separate written-work requirement should not be treated as interchangeable with Harvard's two-part statement.

Make the final checks yourself

Read your outline without its opening claims about the issue's importance. Can you still identify a precise question and a response that receives real scrutiny? Check whether every section advances that argument or merely supplies background you enjoyed researching.

Then check the complete statement's allocation and count. Do not hide substantive reasoning in footnotes intended for citations. Leave enough room for the personal part to explain an actual educational purpose rather than ending with a few lines of institutional praise.

Harvard requires the statement to be “solely the product of your own efforts” and restricts assistance from other people and AI. Read the exact current policy before seeking help; our LLM assistance guide distinguishes destination rules.

The LLM personal-statement rubric and law statement review route concern the personal educational case, such as the work done by Part B or a general LLM statement. They do not grade Part A's legal analysis or verify its conclusions, and their availability does not establish permission under Harvard's rules. Browse our law application articles for related document decisions.