is an undergraduate, or bachelor, degree in law (or a first professional degree in law, depending on jurisdiction) originating in England and offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree. In English-speaking Canada it is sometimes referred to as a post-graduate degree because previous university education is usually required for admission. of the abbreviation for the degree is fr
om the genitive plural legum (of lex, legis f., law), thus "LL.B." stands for Legum Baccalaureus in Latin. The United States is the only common law country that no longer offers the LL.B. 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 required degree for the practice of law. It is sometimes erroneously called "Bachelor of Legal Letters" to account for the double "L". Historically, in Canada, Bachelor of Laws was the name of the first degree in common law, but is also the name of the first degree in Quebec civil law awarded by a number of Quebec universities. Canadian common-law LL.B. programs are, in practice, second-entry professional degrees, meaning that the vast majority of those admitted to an LL.B. programme are already holders of one or more degrees, or, at a minimum (with very few exceptions), have completed two years of study in a first-entry, undergraduate degree in another discipline.
