Bachelor of Laws

The Bachelor of Laws (LL.B. or B.L) (Latin: Legum Baccalaureus) is an undergraduate degree in law (or a first professional degree in law, depending on jurisdiction) originating in England and offered in most common law jurisdictions. The "LL." of the abbreviation for the degree is from the genitive plural legum (of lex, law). Creating an abbreviation for a plural, especially from Latin, is often done by doubling the first letter (e.g., "pp" for "pages"), thus "LL.B." stands for Legum Baccalaureus in Latin. It is sometimes erroneously called "Bachelor of Legal Letters" to account for the double "L".

The United States no longer offers the LL.B. though some universities introduced a Bachelor of Science degree in Legal Studies that includes Constitutional Law, Tort Law, and Criminal Law within the curriculum. The Master of Science of Laws (MSL) is also offered in some universities accredited by the American Bar Association. While the LL.B. was conferred until 1971 at Yale University, since that time, all universities in the United States have awarded the professional doctorate J.D., which then became the generally standardized degree in most states for the necessary bar exam prior to practice of law. Many law schools converted their basic law degree programmes from LL.B. to J.D. in the 1960s, and permitted prior LL.B. graduates to retroactively receive the new doctorate degrees by returning their LL.B. in exchange for a J.D. degree. Yale graduates who received LL.B. degrees prior to 1971 were similarly permitted to change their degree to a J.D., although many did not take the option, retaining their LL.B. degrees.