Who’s Here? How U.S. Law Schools Understand Their International Students

Carole Silver

International students have been a significant presence on U.S. campuses and in U.S. law schools for decades. They have accounted for 5% or more of overall enrollment in U.S. higher education each year since 2015 (with the exception of the 1^st year of the pandemic) and 3% or more since 1992.¹ While trends in the law school context are difficult to discern (more about this below), it is clear that international students have been an important element in U.S. legal education since at least the late-1990s, when schools began to increase the number and size of degree programs aimed at international students.² Between 2012 and 2021, for example, nearly 60,000 unique individuals obtained a visa to study in an ABA-approved law school.³ It is not clear what impact the second Trump administration will have on this dynamic, particularly because of visa delays and uncertainty about OPT, but the rhetoric against international individuals in the first Trump administration did not substantially dampen mobility into the U.S. for law school until the pandemic.⁴

While law schools and universities have grown reliant on the contributions of international students to the intellectual life of their institutions, to their financial well-being and to their global reputations, there is very little understanding of the identities and experiences of these students, including where they’re from, who pays for their education, their bar exam aspirations (much less results) and even the number of international students studying in particular law schools.

Kathryn Hendley and Alexander Straka aim to shed light on these issues in their new article, International Students from the Perspective of U.S. Law Schools. The article analyzes data they collected from 81 law schools during the spring of 2019 (that is, just as law schools and universities were shifting to online classes because of COVID) by surveying the administrators managing international students. (P. 61.) Their focus is on international students enrolled in LLM and other non-JD degree programs as well as non-degree students such as visitors. (P. 68.) The LLM remains the degree program that attracts the largest share of international students. Hendley and Straka found that “[w]ell over half [of the responding law schools] told us that…[LLM programs] accounted for 80 percent or more of their foreign students.”

The article addresses five key questions: where international law students are from, which U.S. law schools host international students, how students pay for their U.S. legal education, whether they take a bar exam, and their participation as alumni. Each of these is taken up briefly below.

Where are international students from? The largest cohort of students at most of the responding schools were from East Asian countries; this is consistent with the trend for all levels of U.S. higher education.⁵ One particularly interesting finding was that public law schools tended to host larger numbers of students from East Asia as well as students from Latin and South America, while private law schools tended to host larger cohorts of European students. (P. 74.) The authors did not explain the reasons for these trends. Perhaps they reflect reputational differences in the home countries of certain students, or differences in funding, for example. Along with exploring these enrollment differences, future work also could address what it means to be “from” a particular country or region. Is this a student’s birth country? Their country of citizenship? The place they lived when they were applying to law school? And how do these distinctions matter, if at all?⁶

Which law schools host international students? Hendley and Straka found that both ranking and size of a law school’s overall student body correlated with hosting more international students, particularly in specially-designed degree programs aimed directly at the international student population, like the LLM program. (P. 63.) In contrast, unranked law schools were less likely to host international students outside of the JD program. (P. 64.)

Larger law schools (more than 600 students) were more likely to offer an LLM or other degree designed specifically for international students. (P. 64.) International recruiting also factored into attracting more students, and larger law schools were more likely to support this than smaller schools. (P. 65.) Interestingly, Hendley and Straka also found that certain law school characteristics—like being located in a state where international LLM graduates could sit for the bar exam, or being situated in an urban environment or in a major legal market—did not have a significant impact on whether a school had a special program for international students. (Pp. 65 n. 22, 66.) This is somewhat surprising based on the way international students describe the importance of bar eligibility and proximity to international legal markets like New York, and it stands as an important finding of their work that could lead to useful follow-up research.

Do law schools contribute to funding international students? As far as I know, no study of international law students has ever gathered information from law schools about the financial support schools offer these students.⁷ Hendley and Straka included this topic in their survey and, while only a subgroup of their respondents answered questions about funding, insights from these are quite interesting. (Pp. 74, 78.) For example, overall, only 4.6% of the 37 schools that provided substantive responses about funding indicated that they provide no funding to international students (P. 75), while nearly 14% indicated that none of their students pay full tuition. Both of these statements are relevant to the conversation around why law schools court international law students—it isn’t only about the money they contribute but also about their contributions to the intellectual life of the law school, to efforts to enroll a diverse class and to the competition for prestige that accompanies a global reputation for both the law school and its university (which goes to faculty recruitment, partnerships and research, too).

Equally interesting are Hendley and Straka’s findings about which law schools provide financial support. First, more public law schools offered some funding for all of their international students than did private law schools. Second, while “private schools seem to expect students to contribute,” they also provided some support. For example, law schools that were private, large in terms of the overall student body, or highly-ranked reported that they offered international students funding that would cover something less than half of the full tuition costs (which Hendley and Straka defined as tuition plus living expenses. (Pp. 74 n.52, 75.) Third, “[i]t is the smaller and lower-ranked schools, as well as some state schools, that press their foreign students for full tuition.” (P. 75.)

Do international students aspire to take a U.S. bar exam? Law schools have been skittish about sharing information regarding international students’ experiences with a U.S. state bar exam; they are not required to report bar pass rates, for example, and because pass rates are considerably lower for international students generally,⁸ this typically is not something they choose to report voluntarily. At the same time, the intention to take a bar exam can have an important influence on course selection for international students, and it also may provide insight into why particular students find U.S. legal education valuable. In recent years, bar prep courses have been developed specifically for international students, and certain law schools make a point of supporting international students in their bar preparation activities.

Nearly every responding law school reported that at least some of their international students sat for a U.S. bar exam (P. 83), but this was more common for schools ranked in the top 30, or those with large student bodies. Relatedly, regulation matters and schools in jurisdictions that permit LLM graduates to sit for their bar also were more likely to report that some students pursued this route. (P. 83.) Students were more likely to sit for a bar exam if their international cohort included 20% or more of students from Europe, or if they were at a law school with a larger cohort of international students. (Pp. 83-84.) It’s not clear why Europeans would influence interest in the bar exam, but Hendley and Straka attribute the relationship to law school size to a “herd mentality” influence. (P. 83.)

Do international students participate as alumni? One of the most fascinating topics pursued by Hendley and Straka is participation in alumni activities. This is something that has not been emphasized in research on international students, and in fact is mostly lacking in research on legal education generally. Anecdotally, international law graduates are actively engaged alumni at some law schools and mostly absent in others—explaining this could be useful to both international graduates and to the law schools.

Hendley and Straka found that alumni engagement is more likely in large law schools and in highly-ranked schools. It is not particularly surprising that ranking correlates with alumni engagement, as the social capital inherent in these interactions is likely to be seen as valuable. Law school size might reflect overall resources, and Hendley and Straka found that “[a]ll of the law schools that characterized their foreign students as very active alumni fall into the subset of schools that send their staff members abroad to recruit students.” (P. 85.) Sending staff overseas allows for engagement on the home turf of alumni, but at the same time, it is not sufficient: according to Hendley and Straka, “[o]ver 85 percent of the schools that told us their foreign students were not very active had sent staff abroad.” (P. 85.) I wonder about differences in investment by law schools devoted to generating alumni engagement, and the extent to which law schools convey to their international alumni that they value their perspectives and advice.

Overall, this article shines a light on the issue of who comes to the United States to study law, not to mention what experiences they have here. While certain of Hendley and Straka’s results are not entirely surprising (international students prefer law schools that are highly ranked, have large student bodies, and offer programs designed specifically for them), others open new areas of inquiry for further research (which law schools devote financial resources to attract these students, and which have active international alumni). The questions addressed by Hendley and Straka reflect the way that the United States, its universities and its legal profession, including law practice organizations, fit into the hierarchies of international students’ home countries. This is fluid, and while it is impossible to know with certainty how the policies and rhetoric of the current Administration will affect assessments of U.S. law and lawyers in ways that may undermine interest in U.S. legal education, it is likely that the way the Administration is attempting to quash the exercise of free speech by individuals with international identities and statuses will be considered by prospective students contemplating the value they might gain from studying in a US law school.

Hendley and Straka’s work comes at a time when information about international students will be even more limited than in the past because the ABA recently eliminated the mandate that law schools report on the number of international students in their JD programs, thus eliminating the sole reporting requirement related to international students.⁹ While it is astounding to me that international legal education in the United States remains shrouded in mystery, the work of Hendley and Straka provides insight and raises important questions for future research.

1. IIE, Open Doors International Student Data, Enrollment Trends.
2. Carole Silver, Internationalizing U.S. Legal Education: A Report on the Education of Transnational Lawyers, 14 Cardozo J. of Int’l & Comp. Law 143, 147 (2006).
3. Carole Silver and Ritika Giri, Diasporas in Global Legal Education, in Bryant Garth and Swethaa Ballakrishnen, eds., Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Global Legal Education (forthcoming).
4. Carole Silver and Ritika Giri, “Is Post-Graduate Legal Education in the U.S. Still Globally Attractive? Using the past to consider the future: international law students 2012-2021,” presented at AALS Annual Meeting (1.10.2025).
5. IIE Open Doors, All Places of Origin, Historical Data; IIE Open Doors, Academic Levels and Places of Origin, Historical Data.
6. In earlier research with Swethaa Ballakrishnen, we identified a group of students who held Canadian citizenship but were born in China. We perceived differences between these students and Chinese and Canadian students who had been born and held citizenship in China and Canada, respectively. Carole Silver and Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, International Law Student Mobility in Context, in Bryant Garth and Gregory Shaffer, The Globalization of Legal Education (2022), 476, 492, n.45.
7. But see Carole Silver, Agents of Globalization in Law, LSAC Research Report (2009), at 7 (available upon request)(international law graduates’ reporting on funding).
8. The New York State Board of Law Examiners, NYS Bar Exam Statistics, Annual Pass Rates 2004-2024; National Conference of Bar Examiners, “Law School Outside the USA”.
9. ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar -> Resources -> Questionnaires & Applications -> Annual Questionnaire -> Complete 2024 AQ Instructions -> Part II. Admissions and Enrollment (“The ABA no longer treats U.S. Nonresident as a separate category. Please enter your Law School’s students, regardless of citizenship status, using the other categories. Continue to enter Hispanics of any race and Race/Ethnicity Unknown before other categories.”).