MJ Concentration in Employee Benefits
Enhance Your Marketability with an MJ Concentration in Employee Benefits
Our MJ Concentration in Employee Benefits offers working non-lawyer professionals, including human resource executives, actuaries, accountants, investment advisors, and others, enhanced the marketability in the employee benefits field. While you will not be able to practice law upon graduation, the MJ program will open the door to lucrative opportunities previously unavailable to you.
We take pride in the depth and breadth of the materials covered in our curriculum. As a result of the continuous input from our faculty and advisory board, our curriculum remains timely, focused, and relevant to the field of employee benefits law. As an MJ degree candidate pursuing the MJ Concentration in Employee Benefits, you'll develop an impressive knowledge of legal and policy issues, as well as new skills to enable you to think analytically and critically in this ever-changing field, through our transactional approach to legal education.
Degree candidates can also earn our MJ Concentration in Employee Benefits entirely online through UIC John Marshall's eDegrees distance education.
Requirements
Candidates pursuing the MJ Concentration in Employee Benefits must have 5 years of previous employee benefits experience and must complete 30 credits in order to earn their MJ degree. In addition to required courses, candidates must complete 2 introductory law courses. Thereafter, candidates pursuing the concentration will select elective courses from the same offerings available to attorneys seeking their LLM in Employee Benefits.
Classes are held in the late afternoon and evenings, and on Saturdays. One-week accelerated courses are also offered during the academic year. To accommodate the diverse needs and experiences of degree candidates, the program may be pursued full time or part time. Most of our degree candidates complete the program within two years. Please read the Time Limits on Degree Completion Policy.
Students who matriculated prior to August 16, 2019, are subject to degree requirements in place when they first enrolled, provided they complete those requirements within the time limit for degree completion and do not interrupt their enrollment without formal approval. Degree requirements in effect prior to August 2019 are available on eCommons; students should consult their degree audit for further information.
Note: We are currently in the process of converting JMLS course numbers to new UIC course numbers. Students registering for Summer 2020 may need to use the Registrar’s course conversion table to find the JMLS course number for summer registration. When using the table, you can use the UIC course number listed on this page to find the correlating JMLS course number needed for registration. For fall 2020, students will register using the UIC course number.
Curriculum
Required Courses
Required Introductory Courses
Required MJ Courses
- Employee Benefits Law (EB 475, 3 Credits)
- Fundamentals I of Retirement Plan Issues (EB 520, 3 Credits)
- Fundamentals II of Retirement Plan Issues (EB 521, 3 Credits)
- Survey of Executive Compensation Plans (EB 460, 2 Credits)
- Survey of Welfare Plan Issues (EB 501, 2 Credits)
- Tax & Employee Benefits Research (EB 511, 2 Credits)
Please review each course description to determine what prerequisites apply.
Elective MJ Courses
- Cash or Deferred Arrangements (EB 533, 2 Credits)
- Compensation Law: Taxation & Other Legal Issues (EB 482, 3 Credits)
- Contemporary Benefit Issues (EB 545, 2 Credits)
- Employee Benefits in Corporate Transactions (EB 556, 1 Credit)
- Employee Benefits Litigation (EB 479, 2 Credits)
- Employee Benefits Practice & Procedure (EB 541, 2 Credits)
- Employee Benefits Public Policy (EB 551, 2 Credits)
- ERISA Fiduciary Law (EB 536, 2 Credits)
- ERISA Responsibilities for Financial Institutions & Service Providers (EB 531, 2 Credits)
- ESOPs (EB 535, 1 Credit)
- Executive Compensation Benefits Advanced (EB 547, 2 Credits)
- Externship or Practicum in Employee Benefits (EB 555, 1-4 Credits)
- Health Care Reform ACA (EB 494, 3 Credits)
- Independent Study in Employee Benefits (EB 596, 1-3 Credits)
- International Employee Benefits (EB 553, 1 Credit)
- Lawyering Skills IV: Drafting: Employee Benefits (EB 450, 3 Credits)
- Special Topics in Employee Benefits Law (EB 594, 1-2 Credits)
- Specialized Employee Benefit Plans (EB 543, 2 Credits)
- Survey of Retirement Plan Issues (EB 522, 2 Credits)