Admissions

For now, JSW Law offers two programs:

1. BA.LL.B./PGDNL: This is a 5 year integrated program offered to undergraduate students.
2. PGDNL: This is a one year program offered to graduate students. This program is most commonly provided to those graduates who have completed their BA.LLB or law program from outside Bhutan.
3. LLM: This program (by coursework or research) is a one- or two-year program designed for those with legal training and experiences in law to give expanded knowledge of law or subject specialization. MLS Program will allow those coming from non-legal backgrounds and experiences to pursue a postgraduate legal education. The program will begin from August, 2025.

• Class 12 Results: You must have obtained at least 60% in both Dzongkha and English. Your performance in Class 12, especially in Dzongkha and English, is important.  
• Bhutan-LSAT: All applicants meeting the above-mentioned cut-off are required to sit for the Bhutan-LSAT, a Law School Admissions Test. The score on the Bhutan-LSAT will be a significant factor in the selection process.  
• Dzongkha Test: You will need to take a Dzongkha test for us to assess your language proficiency.  
• Face-to-Face Interview: Shortlisted candidates will be invited for a face-to-face interview. Your performance in the interview will be assessed to evaluate your oratory skills and listening comprehension, maturity and “social fit,” and overall suitability (motivation and enthusiasm) for the program.
• Other Requirement:
  • Applicant must not have reached the age of 24 years old by the date of the closing of applications;
  • Applicant must not have previously applied for admission to the Program more than once
  • Applicant must have completed the equivalent of Grade XII at a foreign educational institution

YES! We care about your academic results. In fact, given the importance of language skills for lawyers, we can not consider any applications from students who secured below 60% in either Dzongkha or English in their class 12 exams.  

As for other subject scores, yes we will consider them, however, we do not have qualifying percentage scores like in Dzongkha and English. But your high school grades are not the only thing we consider in our application process.

We care as much or more about the skills you have that will make you successful as a lawyer (such as your ability to think logically, your problem-solving skills, your fluency with the written language, and your ability to critically analyze an argument and when appropriate — respond with a counter-argument of your own).

You may have honed some of these skills at school–or in your private life outside of school–but they will not be prominently reflected in your class 12 marks. For this reason, we have designed our own JSW Law entrance examination (Bhutan-LSAT-Law School Admission Test) that will test you on precisely these skills. Moreover, we weigh the score you get on our entrance examination at 1 1⁄2 times the weight we assign to your class 12 marks!

Once we have made a first cut of our applicant pool based on these two “numbers” (your class 12 marks and your score on our entrance examination), we next want to find out more about who you are as a person.  Since no one examination can ever capture that, we will invite all of our final candidates to our office (Pangbisa, Paro) for an in-person interview with JSW Law faculty.  During that interview, we will want to know what motivates you to become a lawyer as opposed to some other profession? What makes you excited about this career? What are your phobias? What kind of law might you one-day hope to practice?

As we like to say, the legal profession is more than “just a job,” and we wish to create a healthy community of colleagues even before you graduate from JSW Law to become a lawyer. For this reason, we will rank this in-person interview almost as highly as we do your class grade 12 scores.

JSW Law started to offer a self-financed Postgraduate Diploma In National Law (PGDNL) in the year 2023 with the discontinuation of the same programme at the Royal Institute of Management. JSW Law will announce the admission of this programme in the month of May through our website https://jswlaw.bt/ and other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Please know that the admission notice that you may receive in the month of January is for the B.A LL.B/PGDNL and not for PGDNL.

With regard to this issue, the admission criteria of JSW Law is similar to those governing admissions to the Royal University of Bhutan (RUB) and other undergraduate scholarships whereby students are welcome to apply as long as they can demonstrate “evidence of identity” using some means other than a CID card.

Trust us that the admission process of JSW Law is very rigorous with fairness and transparency where all the eligible applicants will be given equal opportunity to participate in the selection process. Admission decisions will be made by the admission committee after thorough analytical discussions. The admission committee will be composed of JSW Law executives and relevant members from both teaching and administrative departments. Inevitably, the committee will have to make very difficult choices in deciding whom to select. With 25 maximum intake capacity, some truly exceptional applicants will be ranked 26^th, 27^th, and 28^th for example and no matter how much we might like to, we simply will not be able to admit those candidates regretfully.

JSW Law wants to give you – an opportunity to demonstrate how qualified you are to be one of our prospective students. The practice of law requires skills that are not always adequately demonstrated by your Class XII marks. Lawyers need to be excellent communicators, and need to excel at logical thinking and through their ability to process and analyze information and produce coherent statements demonstrating that analysis. 

1. Entrance exam: JSW Law calls it Bhutan-LSAT (Law School Admission Test). The test is designed, and conducted to assess candidates’ analytical reasoning, logical reasoning and reading comprehension.
2. Personal interview: JSW Law calls it a face-to-face interview and it is conducted to evaluate your oral and listening comprehension, maturity and “social fit,” and overall suitability (motivation and enthusiasm) for the program.

No. As explained in the question-“Do you care about our academic results in other classes?,” the admission process for JSW Law School strives to consider the whole student. As a student, grades are a necessary part of the whole student. If you have failed other subjects or the other parts of your Class 12 exams, you will not be considered for admission to JSW Law School.

We want you to apply to JSW Law even without your marks—just based on the conviction that you are the right student for us to consider. We’ll take your marks from BCSEA into consideration once they are available.

NO. The admission committee will see the ratio for analytical discussions but with no gender reservations.

If you fail the entrance exam or Bhutan-LSAT, then you will not be invited to the interview and your application will no longer be considered for admission.

The Arts have not captured the law as a discipline. To the contrary, Bhutan needs all kinds of lawyers, not just those who studied the arts in high school, but also those who are good at maths, science, business, and planning. The law is a diverse profession. Two examples:

1. We will need environmental lawyers who know not just how to find relevant laws, but also how to understand the science and politics of climate change and sustainable development.
2. We will need corporate lawyers who understand not just how to draft a contract, but also how to ensure that those documents reflect a viable business model that will work in Bhutan, and produce benefits for Bhutanese citizens.

Thus, to take up this diverse profession and to prepare layers with basics of multiple understanding and learning, applicants from all subject streams are welcome.

The entrance examination or the Bhutan-LSAT will test your logical thinking and your ability to process and analyze information and produce coherent statements demonstrating that analysis. Prior to the examination, we will distribute a study guide to help you prepare for the types of questions we will ask, but please be forewarned that it is a very different type of examination as those you might be used to. The exam will not be based on the class 12 streams and general knowledge.

Of course you can. JSW Law’s admissions process is earlier than the RUB admissions process. This has been done intentionally so as to allow you to make an informed decision if and when you have more than one good option from which to decide.

The decision for the government scholarship program will be made before JSW Law’s decision. However, government scholarship for law students is taken over by JSW Law, therefore, if you are interested in studying law and also need a scholarship you will have to apply and compete for at JSW Law.

JSW Law’s maximum annual intake is 25, not based on our own capacity to teach, but rather on our estimate of the employability of law graduates in the country.

We have not admitted any private or self-funded Students till 2024. However, JSW Law is considering admitting self-financed students from 2025, which will be accommodated within our ceiling of 25 students. The selection of the self-financed students is also merit-based.

Logic is crucial for law students because it forms the foundation of legal reasoning, argumentation, and decision-making. For example, as lawyers logic is crucial for the following:

• Critical Thinking and Analysis
• Legal Argumentation
• Interpretation of Legal Texts
• Problem-Solving Skills
• Ethical Reasoning
• Exam Performance and Legal Writing

Mastering logic equips law students with the tools necessary to analyze, argue, and advocate effectively, which are essential skills in legal practice.

Yes we will. As long as you meet the eligibility requirements, we will gladly accept your application.

Convince us that you are ready for law school; we will be curious as to what study habits you developed during your second go-around that perhaps you did not have during the previous year, but we will not punish you for self-improvement.

Of course you can opt for other programs or universities. We only want those students joining us at JSW Law who genuinely want to be there, so we would gladly allow you to withdraw your application by rejecting our admission offer letter which you will receive after you are selected. We strongly discourage the submission of withdrawal after accepting our offer.

Yes. You should not be older than 24 years by the date of the closing of applications.

For now, we do not accept lateral transfers from RUB due to the differing structures of curriculum or the admission system as a whole. So, direct entry or the lateral transfer to JSW Law is almost not an option for students. 

Should there be acceptance in the future, JSW Law will announce it.

Not at present. The number of students is calculated based on the determination of how many graduates will be able to find employment as lawyers or legal professionals upon graduation in Bhutan.

Not necessarily. Some of what you study at law school will necessarily involve a study of Bhutan’s history, including its philosophy and its Buddhist traditions from legal perspectives. There will be a mandatory course on economics to help broaden your maths background. Some parts of law do involve maths, maybe not complex calculus, but you do want the maths to add up for your client’s business contracts.

So if you absolutely HATE history and maths, you might want to think twice about whether law school is the right fit for you.

In all honesty, having a criminal record will make it more difficult for you to convince us that you are a good fit for the law school– and for the legal profession.

But there are exceptions. If what you did was the result of bad decision making as a teenager and you have now grown more mature and wiser as a result of that youthful transgression– we can understand that as well. It depends on what you did, and how you justify your breaches of the law to us.

But given the nature of the legal profession, and the importance of lawyers being seen as ethical and law-abiding individuals, we would need to see a very convincing explanation not only of what happened, but also of how you see yourself as an ethical and upstanding member of the legal profession moving forward.

Unfortunately, we can not consider applications from such students. Your class 12 result is an essential part of our application process.

Tattoos are a personal choice and won’t count against you. Our campus is a smoke free zone. .