llm research

LL.M. Program

5005   Wasserstein Hall (WCC) 1585 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge ,  MA 02138

The LL.M. (Master of Laws) program is a one-year degree program that typically includes 180 students from some 65 countries. The Graduate Program is interested in attracting intellectually curious and thoughtful candidates from a variety of legal systems and backgrounds and with various career plans. Harvard’s LL.M. students include lawyers working in firms, government officials, law professors, judges, diplomats, human rights activists, doctoral students, business people, and others. The diversity of the participants in the LL.M. program contributes significantly to the educational experience of all students at the School.

LL.M. Degree Overview

Ll.m. degree requirements, academic resources, ll.m. class profile, modal gallery, gallery block modal gallery.

Research LLM

Osgoode’s Research LLM is a full-time, research-intensive program that is ideal for students who want to pursue a specific area of legal study in depth, including those who are considering a PhD. Students conduct their research under the supervision of an Osgoode faculty member .

The Research LLM does not qualify students to practise law in Canada. Students interested in practising law should review the licencing rules of the Law Society of the province in which they intend to practice.

Program Requirements

Graduate seminar i: legal research (gs law 6610).

• One study group
• Elective courses
• A major written research work (thesis or major research paper)

The Graduate Seminar is the core course for the Graduate Program in Law. Designed to complement other courses, the seminar provides a venue for developing critical assessments of the law and facilitating students’ progress on their own research, papers and dissertation proposals. The seminar also provides students with an intellectual community and introduces them to Osgoode research resources.

One Study Group

Students participating in study groups read and discuss a significant number of articles with their groups each week. The groups are not structured as courses but as venues for reflection and discourse. LLM students must participate in one study group. They can choose among five options, depending on their research interests:

• Regulation and Governance
• Law and Economic Relations
• Theoretical Perspectives in Legal Research
• Law and Social Justice
• Law in a Global Context

Elective Courses

Research LLM students can fulfil their elective courses through:

• a variety of graduate courses in law
• integrated courses with the JD program
• independent study
• courses in other programs

Major Written Research Work

A major paper is at the core of the Research LLM program. Most students complete a thesis, but students may also choose to submit a major research paper and complete additional coursework.

All theses and major research papers should contain an analysis of scholarship on the student’s chosen topic and the results of the student’s research – based on primary sources – in the form of a sustained argument. They should have standard scholarly apparatus, footnotes and a bibliography, prepared in accordance with the McGill Guide to Legal Citations.

Thesis Option

Major Research Paper (MRP) Option

100-125 pages

60-70 pages

Additional elective courses required to complete the LLM

Evaluation and defence

Students must succeed in an oral defence of their thesis before an examination committee.

MRPs are evaluated by the student’s supervisor and by one other member of the Graduate Program chosen by the supervisor in consultation with the Graduate Program Director. In exceptional circumstances, the second examiner may be a member of another Graduate Program at York University or another university.

Additional notes

Some students choose to fulfill the program’s thesis requirement with a Portfolio Thesis: one or two published articles (depending on length and scope) developed during their time in the Osgoode graduate degree, submitted in lieu of a traditional thesis.

The MRP is an original piece of scholarly work equivalent to an article of publishable quality for a reputable law journal. It’s typically more substantial than a research paper for a regular course, but less substantial than a thesis.

Additional Courses

Students entering the Research LLM without an LLB or JD may be required to take additional courses on the advice of their supervisor. Completing this extra coursework during their program can be helpful to students whose research relates to fields of law in which they do not have extensive background. The Graduate Program Director determines whether students must pursue additional courses in order to fulfill the requirements of the LLM.

Time to Completion

Both the Thesis and MRP options should be completed in three or four terms. Generally, students take courses in the fall and winter terms, conduct their research in the winter term and write the Thesis or MRP in the summer term. Graduate students must register in each term (fall, winter, summer) from the start of their program to completion.

Residency Requirement

Students must be located such that they are able to progress on all program requirements requiring geographical availability on campus.

More Detail:

Faculty research advisors, related topics:, funding and fees, intellectual life, meet our current doctoral students.

Cheat Sheet | Large Language Models+ For Scientific Research

Large language models+ for scientific research.

Updated August 2023

LLMs and Tools for R&D

To help scientists and researchers navigate the increasing number of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) options, Enthought’s experts put together this summary of Large Language Models (LLMs) and related tools that are most relevant for R&D updated as of early August 2023. This is a fast-moving field, so expect that the landscape will continue to change quickly.

We also suggest getting started with our What Every R&D Leader Needs to Know About ChatGPT and LLMs on-demand webinar as well as these additional resources:

• The Practical Guides for Large Language Models (GitHub)
• Applications of transformer-based language models in bioinformatics: a survey (ISCB)
• Recent advances and applications of deep learning methods in materials science (Nature)

Download PDF

The Major Players

Of the major players in AI, only OpenAI is currently offering their LLMs as a commercial service, and then only by invitation (as of this writing). However, many companies have experimental or non-commercial models to experiment with. Keep IP issues in mind with these.

OpenAI - openai.com OpenAI offers a variety of different LLMs and APIs addressing different use-cases, including fine-tuning models on your own data.  Serious commercial use should be via the APIs, which are currently available by invitation.

Meta AI LLaMA 2 - github.com/facebookresearch/llama/blob/main/MODEL_CARD.md A collection of related LLMs released by Meta AI (Facebook). Unlike version 1, version 2 is available for commerical and research purposes.

Google Bard - bard.google.com Google’s experimental LLM. No public APIs available yet, and chatbot conversations are used for further training, so not yet ready for commercial use.

Amazon AlexaTM - github.com/amazon-science/alexa-teacher-models Amazon Science’s LLM, which can be accessed for non-commercial use via AWS SageMaker.

Anthropic Claude - claude.ai Unique model because of its large context window (100k+ tokens), allowing it to answer questions about longer documents. API access is only available via inquiries. A chat interface is generally available, but conversations may be used for further training, so not a commercial option.

Hugging Face - huggingface.co Hugging Face provides infrastructure support for LLM and other Machine Learning operations, including hosting, training and deployment of models. They also host some internally developed and open-source models such as BLOOM.

Open-Source LLMs

If you want to train, fine-tune, or run a LLM on your own, there are a number of models available ranging from older models from major AI companies to non-commercial research models, to some more recent, permissively licensed models.

Google BERT - github.com/google-research/bert One of the first openly available transformer-based LLMs and available under the permissive Apache 2.0 license.  BERT is the foundation for many of the tools for scientific applications of LLMs.

OpenAI GPT-2 - github.com/openai/gpt-2 OpenAI’s 2nd generation LLM, released under a permissive MIT license. GPT-2 is now 4 years old, so well-behind the state-of-the-art, but ground-breaking at the time.

BLOOM - bigscience.huggingface.co/blog/bloom A multi-lingual LLM by a large consortium of researchers and organizations, including Hugging Face.  It is open-sourced under the Responsible AI License (usable commercially with some restrictions, particularly around disclosure and medical use-cases). There is also BLOOMZ which is fine-tuned for following instructions rather than conversation.

Falcon LLM - huggingface.co/tiiuae An LLM released by the Technology Innovation Institute under a permissive Apache 2.0 license. This is used as a basis for a number of other open tools, such as LAION’s Open Assistant (https://open-assistant.io/).

MPT-30 - mosaicml.com/blog/mpt-30b A collection of LLMs with different optimizations trained inexpensively on very large input sets. Released by MosaicML under the Apache 2.0 license with the intent that it is commercially usable.

Dolly/Pythia - huggingface.co/databricks/dolly-v2-12b An LLM tuned by Databricks based on the Pythia LLM. It is not cutting edge but is large and released under an MIT license.

Stanford University Alpaca - crfm.stanford.edu/2023/03/13/alpaca.html A model based on Meta’s LLaMA v1 produced by the Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM) group at Stanford. The model is open-sourced under a non-commercial license and designed to be trained inexpensively on smaller data sets. There are a number of other models derived from this, such as Vicuna (lmsys.org/blog/2023-03-30-vicuna).

LeRF - lerf.io LeRF combines the ability to reconstruct a 3D scene from a handful of still images using Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) with LLMs, allowing easy searching of a 3D scene using natural language. The models and code are open source, but currently without a license, and so not yet commercially usable.

Toolkits and APIs

To go beyond simple chat applications of LLMs, you will need some tools to connect the models with other services or even libraries to build and train your own models.

Transformers - huggingface.co/docs/transformers/index A toolkit built on top of PyTorch and TensorFlow that provides building blocks for LLMs as well as other state-of-the-art machine learning models. It also integrates with the Hugging Face public API to facilitate building, training and running models in the cloud, as well as accessing many 3rd party models.

LangChain - python.langchain.com/en/latest/index.html LangChain is a toolkit for building LLM-centered applications, particularly agents and assistants. It provides automation for building special-purpose prompts which work well with LLMs to produce particular types of outputs, as well as integration with other services such as data sources and code execution.

Science-Specific Tools

In the last few years there have been a number of high-profile papers and toolkits in Material Science and Bioinformatics that use these new ML models.  Most of these have source code and model weights freely available, but there are not yet any services built on top of these. They are research-grade software, not production-grade, with many based on LLM techniques that are a generation or two behind the current state-of-the-art. There are likely to be better models in the future.

ChemBERT - github.com/HyunSeobKim/CHEM-BERT Chemical property prediction from SMILES molecular structure representation. There are other models derived from this original work.

ChemCrow - github.com/ur-whitelab/chemcrow-public LangChain-based package for solving reasoning-intensive chemical tasks posed using natural language. This currently needs API access for OpenAI and possibly other APIs depending on the tasks.

ProteinBERT - github.com/nadavbra/protein_bert A framework for building protein property predictors from protein sequence information. The base model is designed to be fine-tuned to for arbitrary properties.

TransUNet - github.com/Beckschen/TransUNet Next-generation medical image segmentation using transformer-based models. This has the potential to be cheaper to train and more capable of detecting large-scale structures in an image.

Enformer - huggingface.co/EleutherAI/enformer-preview Transformer-based gene expression and chromatin prediction from DNA sequences. Similar to LLMs, Enformer has the capability of tracking a wider context within a DNA sequence than previous models.

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Study Postgraduate

Llm by research (law) (2024 entry).

Course code

30 September 2024

1 year full-time; 2 years part-time

Qualification

• LLM by Research

University of Warwick

Find out more about our Law LLM by Research degree.

The University of Warwick's Law School offers a comprehensive LLM by Research. Pursue an extended research project in a wide range of areas, with careful supervision from a specialist.

Course overview

In this programme you will be carefully supervised by an individual specialist in your chosen area of study and supported to generate a research question and produce a thesis. For this degree you are required to write a thesis of up to 40,000 words.

Our Research Degrees attempt to achieve a balance between individual study, academic supervision, and participation in a communal, scholarly learning environment. As a research student, you will be a vital part of our research culture and we will encourage you to fully participate in the life of the Law School.

Teaching and learning

You will attend a research methods and theory course and meet with your supervisor at least once a month throughout your degree.

Each year postgraduate research students get the benefit of, feedback and presentation opportunities, skills workshops as well as a series of ‘masterclass’ events led by world-leading researchers. These workshops and events support a self-critical assessment of research methods and techniques and allow you to learn from others working in your field. In addition, you will be invited to attend research seminars, public lectures and other training opportunities with the Law School and across the University.

General entry requirements

Minimum requirements.

2:1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in Law or a related social sciences discipline with significant legal content.

English language requirements

You can find out more about our English language requirements Link opens in a new window . This course requires the following:

• Overall IELTS (Academic) score of 7.0 and component scores.

International qualifications

We welcome applications from students with other internationally recognised qualifications.

For more information, please visit the international entry requirements page Link opens in a new window .

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There are no additional entry requirements for this course.

Our research

Eleven research clusters:

• Contract, Business and Commercial Law
• Comparative Law and Culture
• Development and Human Rights
• Gender and the Law
• International and European Law
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• Legal Theory
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• Empirical Approaches
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The Law School’s research is rooted in the twin themes of law in context and the international character of law.

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Find your supervisor using the link below and discuss with them the area you'd like to research.

Explore our School of Law Staff Directory where you will be able see the academic interests and expertise of our staff.

You are welcome to contact our staff directly to see if they can provide any advice on your proposed research, but will still need to submit an application and meet the selection criteria set by the University before any offer is made.

You can also see our general University guidance about finding a supervisor.

Tuition fees

Tuition fees are payable for each year of your course at the start of the academic year, or at the start of your course, if later. Academic fees cover the cost of tuition, examinations and registration and some student amenities.

Find your research course fees

Fee Status Guidance

We carry out an initial fee status assessment based on the information you provide in your application. Students will be classified as Home or Overseas fee status. Your fee status determines tuition fees, and what financial support and scholarships may be available. If you receive an offer, your fee status will be clearly stated alongside the tuition fee information.

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As well as tuition fees and living expenses, some courses may require you to cover the cost of field trips or costs associated with travel abroad.

For departmental specific costs, please see the Modules tab on the course web page for the list of core and optional core modules with hyperlinks to our  Module Catalogue  (please visit the Department’s website if the Module Catalogue hyperlinks are not provided).

Associated costs can be found on the Study tab for each module listed in the Module Catalogue (please note most of the module content applies to 2022/23 year of study). Information about module department specific costs should be considered in conjunction with the more general costs below:

• Core text books
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• Robe hire for your degree ceremony

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Scholarships and financial support

Find out about the different funding routes available, including; postgraduate loans, scholarships, fee awards and academic department bursaries.

Living costs

Find out more about the cost of living as a postgraduate student at the University of Warwick.

School of Law

From the first intake of students back in 1968, Warwick Law School has developed a reputation for innovative, quality research and consistently highly rated teaching. Study with us is exciting, challenging and rewarding. Pioneers of the 'Law in Context' approach to legal education, and welcoming students and staff from around the world, we offer a friendly, international and enriching environment in which to study law in its many contexts.

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The application process for courses that start in September and October 2024 will open on 2 October 2023.

For research courses that start in September and October 2024 the application deadline for students who require a visa to study in the UK is 2 August 2024. This should allow sufficient time to complete the admissions process and to obtain a visa to study in the UK.

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Join a live chat with our staff and students, who are here to answer your questions and help you learn more about postgraduate life at Warwick. You can join our general drop-in sessions or talk to your prospective department and student services.

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Title: topics, authors, and institutions in large language model research: trends from 17k arxiv papers.

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are dramatically influencing AI research, spurring discussions on what has changed so far and how to shape the field's future. To clarify such questions, we analyze a new dataset of 16,979 LLM-related arXiv papers, focusing on recent trends in 2023 vs. 2018-2022. First, we study disciplinary shifts: LLM research increasingly considers societal impacts, evidenced by 20x growth in LLM submissions to the Computers and Society sub-arXiv. An influx of new authors -- half of all first authors in 2023 -- are entering from non-NLP fields of CS, driving disciplinary expansion. Second, we study industry and academic publishing trends. Surprisingly, industry accounts for a smaller publication share in 2023, largely due to reduced output from Google and other Big Tech companies; universities in Asia are publishing more. Third, we study institutional collaboration: while industry-academic collaborations are common, they tend to focus on the same topics that industry focuses on rather than bridging differences. The most prolific institutions are all US- or China-based, but there is very little cross-country collaboration. We discuss implications around (1) how to support the influx of new authors, (2) how industry trends may affect academics, and (3) possible effects of (the lack of) collaboration.

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‘Fighting fire with fire’ — using LLMs to combat LLM hallucinations

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Karin Verspoor is in the School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia and in the School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia.

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Text-generation systems powered by large language models (LLMs) have been enthusiastically embraced by busy executives and programmers alike, because they provide easy access to extensive knowledge through a natural conversational interface. Scientists too have been drawn to both using and evaluating LLMs — finding applications for them in drug discovery 1 , in materials design 2 and in proving mathematical theorems 3 . A key concern for such uses relates to the problem of ‘hallucinations’, in which the LLM responds to a question (or prompt) with text that seems like a plausible answer, but is factually incorrect or irrelevant 4 . How often hallucinations are produced, and in what contexts, remains to be determined, but it is clear that they occur regularly and can lead to errors and even harm if undetected. In a paper in Nature , Farquhar et al . 5 tackle this problem by developing a method for detecting a specific subclass of hallucinations, termed confabulations.

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Competing Interests

K.V. has received speaker fees and travel reimbursement for presentations on Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing/LLMs, and AI in Health care; research funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, and the Medical Research Futures Fund, and has research partnerships with Elsevier BV. K.V. is co-founder and Victoria Node Lead of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare; and a member of the Standards Australia Committee, IT-014-21, AI in Healthcare.

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Ways of studying an LLM program – the research option

Find your perfect llm program search our database of over 2500 courses.

Many LLM programs are to be completed by coursework only; others by a combination of coursework, exams  and thesis. A minority of programs offer the opportunity to skip the coursework entirely and complete the degree via a thesis. An LLM by Research is intended to develop the student's legal research and writing skills by directing them towards planning and executing a large piece of academic research – usually around 30,000-40,000 words – on their chosen field of law. Although this dissertation will be completed under specialist supervision, the student will be expected to demonstrate the ability to work independently. The LLM by Research will develop the student’s ability to present legal arguments by utilising various legal sources and other academic literature.  Although the thesis is the main form of assessment for qualification, many universities also offer the opportunity to participate in taught courses as well, offering the chance to broaden your horizons in the legal fields.

Advantages of studying an LLM by Research

Studying an LLM program by Research is a great option to choose if you want to continue with your legal education to a postgraduate level, especially if you are considering going on to study a doctoral research in law (PhD). It is also a good option if you want to continue working while studying part time for your Master of Laws.

Being part of research community, and meeting eminent researchers, thereby gaining invaluable skills and experience, are other benefits when choosing the research option. As well as developing your research skills, you will also develop other transferable skills that will aid your legal and/or academic career.

Another advantage of a research-only program is that you may be able to do most of your work elsewhere – wherever you have a suitable library or internet connection, for instance. Although many programs have formal residency requirements, they are often not enforced. Make sure you check your eligibility to study, as recent legislation by the UK Border Agency, can affect overseas students in the UK, making them only eligible to apply for full-time study.

Applying for an LLM by Research

Although all universities have different application procedures, if you are applying to do an LLM program by Research, you will have to submit a decent research proposal. This should include the title of your proposed research, a concise introduction, intended methodology, benefits of the research to the wider community, overall summary, as well as details of any supporting supervisors.

There are several factors you will need to consider when choosing where to do your LLM by Research. Obviously the institution’s reputation, specialist fields, and attached professors/specialist researchers will all play an important part in helping you make your decision. Other factors to consider are the funding opportunities available at the law school and, of course, its location.

Almost all of the law schools offering LLMs by Research can be found in current or former British Commonwealth countries: Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa.

In the United States, although a handful of schools offer so-called ‘LLMs by Research’, the typical program, such as that at the University of Michigan, requires one semester of coursework and one of research and writing. The University of Wisconsin is nearly unique in offering a degree that does not require coursework. Unlike most other types of LLM programs, LLMs by Research often allow students to start at different times of year. The University of Bristol, for example, is not unusual in allowing students to start in January, April or October. There are several other LLM by Research programs available in the UK, for example at the Schools of Law at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, as well as the Warwick School of Law.

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