Just like anyone employed in a research position at a University, I receive my fair share of weekly questions and unsolicited projects from prospective PhD applicants. I reply to each email out of courtesy, as it is very rare for one of these emails to pick my interest. It is not a snobbish approach - in fact, anecdotal evidence (I have just asked 10 of my colleagues, randomly chosen) suggests that my average is rather high. The reason for this is, predictably, that most of these requests can be placed on a spectrum, at one extreme of which is the dramatically naïve proposal, which is months of work away from being interesting, and at the other is the completely irrelevant one (and I am not talking about something on a field of international law I do not even teach - I am referring to proposals in criminal law, equity and trusts, land law or any other subject I have not seen since I was an undergraduate student, if ever).
There are colleagues who laugh at these proposals. I used to do that too, in fact, and I may or may not still do so (I know, I should not) when the proposal comes from someone who clearly did not even bother to google my name before sending me a 40 page-document on how they would like to study the implications of [insert here something I have absolutely no clue about]. However, I have been in a rather similar situation less than fifteen years ago: I had an idea, I badly wanted to do a PhD on it, and I had no clue how to write a research project. Moreover, the internet of 2006 was not as generous with guides as it is today. It was, however, already an excellent instrument to get in touch with people all over the world, and my lack of shame in asking complete strangers for help did the trick. Then again, the only thing that allowed me to actually be a competitive PhD applicant was the strength of my idea (or at least the fact that it was perceived as strong), since the document that outlined my research project was - in retrospect - absolutely abysmal. If I had access to the resources that are available today, I would have been much more competitive.
After seeing a few post by colleagues in other disciplines,[1] I thought of jotting down my personal views on how to apply for a PhD in law. The intention is to provide a) further information to those desirous of subjecting themselves to my supervision for a research project in one of my fields of interests,[2] and b) work as a basic guide for aspiring academic lawyers eager to measure themselves with the rigours of a doctoral programme but still in the dark as to how to properly knock at the doors of academia. The big, enormous, gigantic caveat is that what follows is the advice that I would give. It is not a universally shared opinion, it may not be entirely consistent with certain institutions' requirements, certain colleagues' views of PhD supervision, or the kind of academic one wants to become (which means that there are parts of this script that prospective applicants may be better off ignoring completely). In other words, it is always sensible to get second opinions, and I strongly suggest you do so.
1. Why do you want to do a PhD?
While this may be seen, at first glance, as a redundant question (should not anyone who applies for a PhD know why they want to do one?), it is arguable that, in fact, this question lies at the core of a number of further questions and problems. Questions arising from this one concern where to do a PhD, under whose supervision, in what field, according to which methodology, with what goal in mind; problems with supervisors, the topic, the process, and what to do after, often also stem from having tackled this question superficially at the beginning.
Ça va sans dire that there is not one universal answer to this question, nor me or anyone else should feel qualified to suggest one - first, because there are a number of different, perfectly valid reasons why one should want to embark in a PhD programme for 3, 4 or 5 years; second, because the level of personal engagement required by a PhD in law is so high that external suggestions should be kept at a very minimum and, since someone who is not doing a PhD yet does not know about this, those who have been through it already should know better than giving advice on certain matters (this, as we will see later, should also apply to supervisors in their dealings with supervisees).
2. Why do you want to do a PhD with Prof./Dr. X?
You have thought about this long and hard and you have decided that you definitely want to do a PhD in law. Excellent. Now you should think about a possible supervisor or two. In my opinion, the supervisor is much more important than the institution where one does their PhD, but with some caveats - and that is the reason why, contrary to my initial intention, the next question will address precisely the place of the programme.
The choice of a supervisor is crucial, should never be made superficially, and often constitutes the difference between a future, successful career as envisaged prior to enrolling, and three nightmarish years that culminate with the title of Dr (sometimes) and the certainty that one will never set foot in a University again (almost always). So how do you choose your supervisor?
First, pick your topic. It seems trivial, but choosing a supervisor because he or she is an academic superstar is not exactly a great idea, unless said superstar has built their superstardom in your topic of choice. If that is not the case, though, pick a topic you absolutely love (more on that later) and then research it to identify who works in that field and where.
Knowing the names of those in the know is the first step; the second is finding out who they are, and whether they can supervise your PhD. The era of professors with a number of publications so short that it would fit in one A6 page is ended, and rightly so;[3] on the other hand, you may end digging up the name of a rising star with a good number of great articles only to find out that they are finishing a post-doc somewhere, and therefore they cannot supervise a doctoral candidate. Google is your friend: given that a PhD in law is, generally, to be done in a University, your potential supervisor will have an institutional page somewhere, and you will be able to check what they research on, what have they written, and often even what they are interested in supervising. This is crucial: you may have read a great article by Prof. Jane Doe, of the University of Grapowskia, on a comparative analysis of beer brewing and international criminal law; you want to pursue a PhD in international criminal law, so you google Jane Doe, find her email address without checking her page, email her, and she does not reply - or dismisses you very quickly. What you may not know is that Jane Doe is in fact a public international lawyer with an extensive list of publications on international dispute settlement, who wrote an article on international criminal law once as a literary divertissement. Not a great choice for a supervisor, right?
Once you have your list of possible supervisors, you have two choices: either you contact them to explore their interest, or you do not. Some supervisors like to be contacted in advance - if only to save you time should they not be interested in your topic or be already at full capacity, planning a sabbatical or a move elsewhere; some others find the explorative emails annoying, although no one would blacklist you because you dared emailing them in advance. There is no golden rule, and my position is to welcome explorative emails, the instructions for which are in my personal page at the University of Leicester. Since no one ever read them, I might as well repost them here:
I welcome applications for PhDs in the fields of international investment law, international commercial arbitration and public international law. While I'm happy to receive inquiries and assist with drafting research proposals, inquiries about the formal application process and the PhD programme at Leicester must be emailed to pglaw@le.ac.uk. When sending a research proposal, please attach your CV and make your email very short and easy to answer. Every enquiry shall be duly considered; please do not contact me by phone should I not reply to your email immediately, but rather send an always welcomed reminder.
There are only two principles that should always be followed, at least if you would like to do your PhD with me. First, do not, ever, for any reason, cold call the academic you would like to inquiry on. Besides the fact that teaching and meetings take place in our offices, and you may be interrupting, we could quite possibly be reading, writing, thinking or doing any combination of these activities in the few spare minutes we have during teaching terms. Personally, the phone number should be treated like an office door: you enter only if you are invited, and if it is for something important you set an appointment first. If you call, there is absolutely no way I will ever accept to supervise you (sorry: my time, my rule). The second rule, which tends to apply not just to phonephobics like me but almost everyone, can be summarised with "do not mass-email". There are few things more annoying than those emails clearly sent to every academic in a department that recite something along the lines of 'I have seen your list of publications, and you'd be perfect to supervise my project on' something incredibly far from one's actual expertise. This, for some reason, still happens now, in 2019, when even the oldest smartphone can load Google without crashing. Do your homework. Only write to those who may be interested in your research.
Finally, be very careful in the choice of your supervisor. They will not just be the person you will have to interact for the next three or four years of your life - it is also the person that is supposed to teach you how to become an academic, or a researcher in the broadest sense of the term.[4] A superstar is not necessarily the best choice: some of them are also great teachers and mentors, but others may be as spectacular at research as poor at teaching the method of academic research. It happens: Diego Armando Maradona has collected failures as a coach and Magic Johnson lasted only a couple of months on the Los Angeles Lakers' bench. Conversely, someone may be stuck in a middle-tier university with few spectacular publications in their name, but be an amazing supervisor. How do you find out? It is always a hit and miss, but you may want to look at where they did their PhD, how long ago, and if possible find out who they are currently supervising and ask them how they find it. Academic twitter is a great place to cultivate this kind of contacts and a mine of information.
3. Why do you want to do a PhD at the University of X/University of Y/Z University?
This is tricky. There are a number of reasons to choose a University over another - proximity to one's or one's parents' home, presence of a partner, weather, culture, and so on - and they can be so personal that it makes no sense to discuss them here. I will limit myself to discuss the objective reasons why someone should pick a certain institution over another - and most of them overlap with the reasons to choose a certain supervisor.
Pretty much anyone who thinks about becoming an academic has four or five Universities in mind - I am not going to repeat the names because I do not want to advertise competitors of my employer and, in any case, if you do not know which institutions I am referring to you probably need further research. Having said that, the top 5 law schools in the ranking[5] may not necessarily be the best place for you. First of all, do they have any scholarships available? Given that, at this point in time, university-funded scholarships for PhDs in law are extremely rare and most of the funds come from agencies, ministries, foundations and families, the availability of a scholarship raises the first issue. If you are funding yourself (through family or your government or any source independent from the institution where you are applying), there will not be much of a problem if at any point your supervisor leaves, since you will have the funding to follow them wherever they go (provided that they wish to bring you there with them). If the scholarship is provided by the University, that is great - they are investing in you and your project. However, bear in mind that, should you lose your supervisor for any reason, you may or may not end up with a new supervisor with a similar expertise, depending on whether your former supervisor indeed had any colleagues in the same field. Should there not be any, you will end up being supervised by a glorified editor, but as a matter of fact you will have to self-supervise your project.
Other than the funding, you should choose the institution where you will do your PhD thinking about the research training you will get and the sort of post-PhD career you would like. On the first point, it is sensitive to apply to a number of different schools (I would say around 6 based on possible supervisors, but I know people that would recommend applying to 20-30 schools). The process is bizarre and very arbitrary, and it is based on a large number of factors you have no control on. Applying to many schools obviously increases your chances to actually do a PhD, while confining your aims to your preferred institution carries at least a 50% chance of never doing a PhD.[6] Do not send the very same application to every school you apply to: I once accepted a PhD candidate even though their cover letter affirmed their excitement at the idea of carrying their research project out at a world-leading institution like Cambridge, where I have never set foot in any capacity other than tourist or conference attendee. It was an exception based on the exceptional quality of the application, though: most people - including myself in any other situation - would have stopped reading at that point.
Once you apply, wait for the responses, and then start your actual selection process. Some schools will reject you outright, for reasons that may or may not be revealed: that is fine, it happens, and there may be thousands of possible reasons to reject your application (often it is because that institution does not have anyone available to supervise your project). Some schools will interview you before deciding: it means they are not only interested in your project, but also very serious about who they admit. It does not necessarily entail that there will be a fantastic, intellectually stimulating PhD community there, but it is very likely - and they are interested in you, so do your best at the interview. Some schools, finally, will like your project and offer you a place in their programme straight away. Great, right? Does it mean you are good to go?
Not so fast. You may be desperate to start researching, in which case by all means, run to the first school that offer you a place. However, you may want - especially if you get acceptance from multiple institutions - to narrow down your choices based on fit and quality. How do you do that? It is simple, if you can afford it: go visit the place, meet your prospective supervisor, a few PhD students, take a tour of the campus and the city. If you cannot spend time and money visiting the place you are supposed to call home for the next few years, use the internet. Information is out there, and facebook is full of groups of academics and PhD students: join them and start asking around. You have no idea how likely it is that you will find people willing to talk to you.
Remember what we said above about the top 5 schools in the rankings? Do not believe those who tell you that, unless you have a PhD from one of those schools, you will never get an academic job. Sure, those names in your CVs will open doors and get you interviews, but if you look around you will see that not every legal academic has gone to Oxford or Cambridge, and you can have a shot at a great career even if you do your PhD in a less-than-stellar University. At the same time, not every place is the same, and not every place looks the same way in the CV of someone applying for a post-doc or a lectureship. Ideally, you will aim at the best schools in your chosen field of expertise; the more generalist the field, the more likely that the best places are the usual suspects, and you can safely apply to those institutions that even people who have never set foot in a University know. However, do you know the best place in the UK to do socio-legal research? Any idea which university has the best law department for those who do legal theory? Ever wondered whether that good-but-not-great law school has a stellar reputation for family law? Bear in mind that, at some point, your CV will be in the hands of a panel of academics that will have to decide whether to call you in for an interview or reject your job application. As stated beforehand, certain names on a CV always call the reader's attention, but - depending on the field - there are a number of other names that would raise the hopes of the specialists while the generalists would not be particularly impressed. Therefore, choose carefully: either you get in somewhere famous, or you may be better off somewhere where the specialists in your field are actually good.
Finally, there are a number of Universities that offer PhD programmes that you should never consider, unless you do not care about an academic career and all you want is to be called "Dr" by your future colleagues. Names will not be found here, as libel is not merely a good subject for exam questions and a lawsuit is the last thing I need. Again, research the people in your field: if certain institutions are never, ever mentioned as places where those lawyers you aim at calling colleagues ever studied, you probably do not want to study there either.
4. How do you apply?
Every application process is different, and the technicalities are usually pretty straightforward; when they are not, there is usually an email address you can write to for further information. Do not write to your prospective supervisor of choice asking for technical guidance on how to file your application: they will likely not know, and they will not be impressed by the show of poor research skills. There are, however, a number of elements in your application that will end up not only in the hands of the administrator who will process said application, but also those of the people who will decide on whether your application is promising enough to call you for an interview or offer you a place in their institution's PhD programme. These elements are, most commonly, a CV, a cover letter, your research project and two or three reference letters.
The CV is always a big question mark. Some people read it carefully, others skim through it looking for the information they are interested in (usually education, marks and publications); some will be genuinely interested about hobbies and non-professional experiences, others will find it childish to write in your CV that you are interested in travelling and tv shows. Personally (I repeat: personally) I always check the applicant's age, where they got their degrees from and whether they have previous research experiences. I do not care much for detailed explanations of the tasks carried out in previous jobs (either they are relevant to the PhD, in which case I would figure them out myself, or they are not relevant, thus I am not interested), I find it puzzling (for lack of a better word) when people write in their CV information about their marital status or religion, and any self-written personal profile along the lines of "a highly driven and talented lawyer..." would make it extremely likely that I will not go any further in reading the application. Let your CV speak for you.
The cover letter is not mandatory for every institution, but it is generally required. I would not go as far as affirming that it makes a difference (ultimately the decision is based on the research project), but I consider it very important nonetheless: it is often the only space to tell your prospective supervisor who you are, what you are interested in and why you want to work with them - and to showcase your writing skills. Write it with care and have someone read it before you submit it: if you cannot make 1,000 words about yourself and your goals interesting, chances are that you will struggle with 100,000 words on a topic only you and a few other individuals in the whole world care about.
The reference letters can be problematic. Ideally, since you are applying for a place in a programme designed to train future academics, you should have two or three academics telling your prospective supervisor how talented you are and how their experiences with you prove your academic potential. In reality, not everyone is sufficiently acquainted with three academics that can write them a reference letter, and it is possible that one of them is too busy or does not command the English language sufficiently to write a decent letter. There are, however, a few tips that can help overcoming these problems. The first is to make sure that the people writing the letters actually know you: a letter written by someone whose English is far from Jane Austen's but speaks about you in enthusiastic terms is much better than a perfectly worded "Ms Soandsoh studied here in 2016 and obtained a degree"; a third letter, should there not be three people who know you enough, can be neutral; but at least the other two must stimulate the curiosity to know you in the reader. The second is to consider your audience: if you are applying for a place in a PhD programme, the letters will be read by academics. Even if not everyone can list a contemporary Ronald Dworkin amongst their referees, an unknown (but easily googleable and looking solid on paper) academic's letter is more effective than the passionate words of the founding partner of a law firm - at least with me: I am looking for future academics, not the greatest solicitor of the year 2030. I would rather have a colleague I have never heard about telling me how insightful is your legal writing than a senior partner (that I will probably have never heard about anyways) letting me know that you are extremely reliable, work well in teams and are very trusted by clients. It is great, good for you, but this is a different sport.
Speaking of sports, let's get into the core of the game: the research project. If one wants to quantify its importance, I would put it at 80%, with all the other elements described above scratching the 20% ceiling: without a good research project I will probably never even read the cv, cover letter and references. On the other hand, if the research project is good, your cv and cover letter must be absolutely horrifying to convince me that you will not be capable of conducting the project. There are many different ways to write a viable project, but its core elements must be there, must be clear, and must be interesting. First, plainly state the topic of your research. If you can think of a catchy and effective title, use it: it will help prospective supervisors understand quickly whether or not they would be interested in supervising the project. Should you not be so great at writing titles, just summarise the project in one sentence: that will be your working title, and it will work just as well as the title of your project. More important than the title - one may say, in fact, more important than any other element of the proposal - is the research question.[7] Hours of PhD training are spent in finding and refining one's research question, and I would not dare saying that such hours could be better spent (although Montaigne and a nice glass of Bordeaux sound like a suitable and pleasant alternative); however, it is standard to give the reader a moment - ideally before even explaining why the research is important, original and every other aspect that should make one lean towards your project - to stop and realise that the eighty to one hundred thousand words you intend to write in the next three years are meant to provide an answer to that particular question. It does not have to be too complex, nor too refined: it is a question, not an explanation. Is party autonomy a necessary element of international commercial arbitration? Is the MFN standard effective in ensuring non-discrimination in host states? Are human rights truly rights? These are all suitable research questions, although they may be too broad: in the end, if your question cannot be answered within 100,000 words, it is probably too broad and your project will be rejected (or at least sent back for amendments). The question, however, should not be too narrow either. Let's try refining the examples I have just made: "is party autonomy a necessary element of arbitration under the ICC rules?" is probably too narrow for a PhD, and is a question that can be easily answered in the space of a journal article (roughly 10,000 words, footnotes included); "is the MFN standard as defined in the US Model BIT effective in ensuring non-discrimination in host states?" seems to narrow it down sufficiently, until one realises that the US are primarily a capital-exporting country, that they have signed BITs with a very large number of countries, and that the specification does not really narrow the scope down; "are human rights truly rights?" may work, as long as you are planning to offer a theoretical enquiry - otherwise, refer to one or two specific conventions. Once you have stated your research question, explain why you want to work on it, why it is important (or, to put it bluntly, why other lawyers should care to read what you will write on it), what makes it novel, and how you plan to do it.
This latter point is often cause of confusion. No one is really interested in the work plan you will submit with the project: at best it will crumble because you had either underestimated yourself, your supervisor's other commitments or the interest you would developed in a different aspect of the research; at worst it will mean nothing because you had overestimated yourself, the relevance of the question, or the fact that the world will not stop while you write your thesis and you might have to amend it to make sure that it will not be already obsolete at submission. What your prospective supervisors are really interested is how you plan to tackle the question. Provide a tentative table of contents (which will suffer the very same fate of the work plan, but at least it will have a purpose) and an explanation of the methodology you intend to apply. If you do not write much about it, or anything at all, it will be assumed that you will follow the path already walked by countless young researchers, including Yours Truly, and embrace the traditional values of Black Letter Law - which sounds much cooler than "I sit on a chair, I read a preposterous amount of books and articles, I think about my problem for more hours a day than a psychiatrist would recommend, and I write a few thousand words every day." If, however, you plan to use a different methodology, you may need to explain which one you want to apply, why that one, how you intend to apply it (if anything to show that you actually know what you are talking about) and what results should such methodology lead you to. Certain theses may require a mixed methodology, in which case you may also want to explain which parts of the work will be dealt with according to either methodology. In any case, do not force your hand and write in the project that you will apply six, seven, eight different methodologies to your thesis: you will not impress anyone and, in fact, your project may be laughed out of consideration.
Finally, add a bibliography. Once again, it does not have to be definitive, for nobody will expect you to master the topic before you embark in the actual research; nor it needs to be exhaustive. It is presumed, however, that you have already read something on the topic you intend to work on for three years, and that your project is the result of sufficient preliminary research to identify a gap in the literature that your thesis will ideally fill. Therefore, a reader will expect your bibliography to include all the seminal contributions in your field of choice, a few less-known but still famous-ish works, and the works that cover the aspect surrounding your perceived gap. If the bibliography is too wide, you should probably take a moment to consider whether there is, in fact, a gap in the literature (look closely: there usually is, and it is just a question of perspective). If the bibliography is too short, however, and you have done your homework so that no relevant work has been ignored, it may be symptom of one of the problems that I have underscored beforehand: the gap is too wide, and a PhD will not be enough to fill it; if that is the case, narrow down the scope of your project to something that still interests you, but it is also feasible.
Once you have all these things ready, find the application websites of the Universities of your choice, follow the instructions and apply. Good luck!
---
[1] I am sure there are similar posts by lawyers, but I have not come across any yet. Any suggestions are very welcome.
[2] This is also the reason why most of this post is aimed at a generic "you". My personal fiction as I write this is me writing to my 24 year-old self. However, should this post be read by someone considering applying for a PhD under my supervision, it is probably appropriate that they step in the shoes of the proverbial "you".
[3] This does not mean that there are no good academics with a relatively low number of publications, or that quantity entails quality, but it is a question for another time (that I have promised myself will come).
[4] Obviously this does not apply if your goal is simply to get a PhD so that you can call yourself a Doctor. If that is the case, find someone who is as uninterested in research as you, get it done quickly, and enjoy the perks of disappointing people who find out you cannot cure cancer or write prescriptions.
[5] any ranking, really.
[6] they are much slimmer, actually, but that is a different issue.
[7] Full disclosure: since no one had explained me how a research project should have looked like before I submitted my proposal to the University of Nottingham, my project did not include a research question - at least, not an actual question ending with a properly placed question mark. I assume my intention were nonetheless clear, otherwise I seriously doubt I would have admitted into the PhD programme of a School of Law with such high standards as Nottingham, but I can retrospectively affirm that I took a colossal risk at that time.