Cornell Law School Standards and Procedures for Semesters Abroad
Modern legal education must train students to succeed in a rapidly-evolving transnational environment. Mastery of a single nation's system of laws is no longer adequate, even if that nation is the United States.
Cornell Law School has a long history of, and strong institutional emphasis on, international and comparative legal studies. Allowing our students to study abroad for a semester is consistent with this institutional emphasis.
A semester of study abroad permits students to approach other legal systems and legal subjects from a non-U.S. perspective. It also provides access to courses and faculty that are not available at Cornell Law School on a regular basis and it affords students the invaluable experience of living and studying in another culture.
Cornell students who wish to spend a semester studying abroad as a part of their law school experience must comply with the following requirements:
Application Deadlines:
Semester exchange and international "term away" application deadlines are as follows:
Applicants not meeting these deadlines will not be eligible for any lottery conducted, if one is necessary; see below.
Application for Semester Exchanges and International Terms Away:
All Cornell Law School students who wish to apply for a semester exchange program, or who seek approval for an international term away must complete and submit the online application.
Applying for More than One Location:
Should you wish to apply for more than one exchange program and/or term away site, you may do so. You must complete the appropriate sections of the application, however, indicating your order of preference and providing all requested information for each site.
Restrictions:
Only students in the formal international dual-degree programs sponsored by Cornell Law School may be approved for study longer than one semester.
Semester abroad programs operated by U.S. law schools will not be approved.
Placement Lotteries:
In recent years, more people have applied for several of the study abroad locations than the number of spaces available. A lottery system is used in such cases. Since semesters abroad at the most popular sites (the Sydney and Bucerius exchanges, and University College London’s Semester in London program) either are not available or are not practicable in the Spring, the expectation is that any necessary lottery would involve Fall semester placements.
Lotteries for Fall placements take place as soon as practicable after the January 20 deadline, allocating the available slots and placing the remaining people on a wait-list in accordance with the lottery results; students who apply after January 20 would be added to wait lists in the order of application. In the event a lottery proves necessary for Spring semester placements, a comparable procedure will be followed, except that third-year students receive priority for available positions.
Tuition Payments:
Cornell students pay their regular Cornell Law School tuition during an exchange or term away semester. The partner or host school will not charge the Cornell students tuition, although there might be other fees (for example, for health insurance or photocopying). In the case of international terms away, every effort will be made to have the host school bill Cornell directly for any applicable tuition payments. In the event this is not possible, Cornell will reimburse the student for the cost of tuition.
Credits and Grades:
Cornell students cannot expect to earn more than 12 Cornell credit hours for academic work done as a part of a semester abroad. In individually-approved cases involving students enrolled in Cornell’s J.D./LL.M. program, however, it might be possible to earn up to 16 credit hours.
Student transcripts will record the number of Cornell credits awarded for work successfully completed during a semester abroad, and the host institution, but will not list either the specific courses or the grades earned.
