What are my education and career options with a foreign college law degree?

[seville 0]

 Hello everyone.

  I have graduated from a Turkish University's faculty of law in Turkey.  This year me and my American fiancé have applied for K-1 visa(Nonimmigrant Visa for a Fiancé) and currently we are waiting for the process to complete. We are looking forward to marry with each other. If everything goes well and I start to live with her in U.S., what can I do with this Turkish Law Diploma in terms of education or career? To be honest I'm pessimist about the matter, because my education was about Turkish Law and I'm not sure how this diploma would be useful in U.S. Maybe there is a career option that I don't know, or I can make this diploma useful by combining it with a master degree that I'm going to take in U.S.?

 

 I'm open to any kind of suggestions, career suggestions or education suggestions like; "You can do a master degree on a specific subject and make your diploma useful."

 

 Thank you for your time.

 

Edited December 18, 2017 by seville

[I&A/T 44]

I have the same situation I am a Tunisian law student I have read about this and asked and I think degrees from other then the UK is unacceptable in the US, you can look further about it but I don’t think a degree in a foreigner law has value in the US .

[Ischnura 285]

 Maybe shoot an email over to the local University where you'll eventually be living and ask how your Turkish degree would transcribe. Some of it might count, never know till you ask, right? If you're willing to go back to school and parts of it count you might be able to skip a few classes ( I was told this about my Health & Social Care qualifications) if it doesn't you'd be looking at a full degree. If Law here doesn't tickle your fancy maybe you could take a different course. Would be worth asking about residency requirements for your state regarding in state tuition too.

[Boiler 45,712]

Would you diploma get you into a Masters programme?

[charmander 692]

On 12/18/2017 at 8:33 AM, seville said:

 Hello everyone.

  I have graduated from a Turkish University's faculty of law in Turkey.  This year me and my American fiancé have applied for K-1 visa(Nonimmigrant Visa for a Fiancé) and currently we are waiting for the process to complete. We are looking forward to marry with each other. If everything goes well and I start to live with her in U.S., what can I do with this Turkish Law Diploma in terms of education or career? To be honest I'm pessimist about the matter, because my education was about Turkish Law and I'm not sure how this diploma would be useful in U.S. Maybe there is a career option that I don't know, or I can make this diploma useful by combining it with a master degree that I'm going to take in U.S.?

 

 I'm open to any kind of suggestions, career suggestions or education suggestions like; "You can do a master degree on a specific subject and make your diploma useful."

 

 Thank you for your time.

Hi, there are a lot of Turkish-American lawyers in the US and a lot of have a law degree from a Turkish institution. I am not really sure what else they needed to accomplish (masters degree, bar exam, etc) to start their profession but it would be a good start to check a few websites for their educational background. Most of them practice immigration or business law. Try googling something like immigration lawyer + turkish.

 

Also check this link (in turkish); they are talking about how to practice law in us. Hope it helps. Good luck.

[elmcitymaven 9,712]

It really depends on which state you plan to practice in, and what the state bar's requirements are for foreign-educated applicants. For the most part, if you don't have the functional equivalent of an American JD and/or have been admitted to practice before the courts in another country, you will need to go back to school and not just pass a bar exam. It could be a one year LLM, or you might need to start all over with a full-blown JD.

 

For example, I completed the postgraduate education necessary to become a solicitor in England and Wales, but I never practiced law and didn't complete a training contract, so I didn't have the functional equivalent of passing the bar. I live in California and wanted to practice here, and California Bar rules required that I start all over with a JD, which has been SUPER FUN, in that at the end of it I will have been in law school for six years in total.  I graduate this year after four years part-time as a student while I worked in the legal field. But if I had wanted to practice in Connecticut, where I first lived when I moved back to the US, I would have only had to have completed a one year LLM to practice. 

 

It's all a confusing drag, but the National Conference of Bar Examiners has published a really helpful guide for foreign educated attorneys that you might want to take a look at: http://www.ncbex.org/pubs/bar-admissions-guide/2017/index.html#p=24 It's a really good starting point. Be prepared that at the very least, you will almost certainly need to do another year of law school. If you know where you want to practice, reach out to the relevant state bar and see if someone can steer you in the right direction. Also, the job market for attorneys in the US still is kind of sucky, even for US-trained attorneys, although that varies from place to place. I am lucky to already have a lucrative position lined up when I graduate and pass the Bar -- if I didn't have that, I probably wouldn't have gone back to school.

 

Good luck! It can be done, and there are other foreign-educated attorneys on VJ who might be able to chime in as well.