In an ongoing push to expand its global reach, UC College of the Law San Francisco has forged a new partnership with one of Latin America’s top law schools – an alliance that will foster valuable exchanges of students, faculty, and scholars for years to come.
UC Law San Francisco signed a partnership agreement on March 6 with Los Andes University in Bogotá, Columbia, one of the world’s top 50 law schools.
“We are very excited to start this new partnership with Los Andes University,” said Binyamin Blum, associate dean of Global Programs at UC Law San Francisco. “This agreement will not only expand our network of partner law schools around the world but also support ongoing efforts to diversify our LLM program and recruit high-quality students from across the globe.”
The agreement builds on UC Law SF’s current partnerships with more than 30 foreign law schools and provides for academic exchanges to enrich the on-campus experience at both institutions.
As a partner law school, Los Andes will nominate up to five of its students each year to enroll in the LLM Program at UC Law SF starting in the 2023-2024 academic year. The LLM Program is a one-year master’s in law degree for foreign students, who can specialize in one of eight fields, including criminal law, intellectual property, taxation, environmental law, and health law.
The two schools will also launch a new student exchange program, in which full-time students from each institution can spend a semester abroad studying law at the partner school. UC Law SF has similar partnerships and exchange programs with law schools in European nations, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Argentina.
By adding Los Andes to its list of partner schools, UC Law SF will increase its number of study-abroad opportunities to 20 programs in 15 countries, spanning five continents. UC Law SF offers more study abroad programs than any other law school in the University of California system.
The new agreement also makes it easier for UC Law SF and Los Andes to attract visiting scholars and professors from each other’s school. Each law school will provide preferential consideration and expedited processing for any professor or scholar applying for a visiting position at the partner institution.
Additionally, the pact with Los Andes supports the goals Blum laid out when he started his tenure as associate dean of Global Programs last summer. At that time, Blum said he wanted to develop more partnerships in parts of the world where UC Law SF had fewer or no collaborations, including Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.
“The partnership with Los Andes is an important step for Global Programs at UC Law SF,” Blum said. “It is our second partnership in Latin America, and only our third in a Spanish-speaking country. Though Los Andes also offers classes in English, we hope that many of our Spanish-speaking students will take advantage of the opportunity to take classes in Spanish at a top university overseas. The agreement allows us to send our students to one of the finest law schools in the world, and also brings the brightest students from around the world to us.”
