In this Platforum9 live session, Miljana Bigovic, DLA Piper Managing Associate and current LLM candidate at Harvard Law School, moderated a discussion on what “higher education” really buys you in 2026. Joined by her colleagues, Angelica Maria Perdomo Luna, Anamarija Javor, Assamaual Saidi Rabah, and Vanessa Marshall de Mothé, they talked about their individual career paths and what led them to Harvard specifically.

Higher Education as Time and Trajectory Design

Rabah described taking a more academic route: discovering a preference for research during his undergraduate work and shaping a long-term ambition to become a professor. He framed degrees as a mechanism that “slows you down” long enough to reflect, test ideas, and speak with peers, professors, and practitioners, a value that sits alongside technical knowledge.

Perspective Beats Knowledge

Javor shared a corporate practice lens: after years working on deals, she sought “a deeper level” understanding and argued that higher education’s core return is perspective on how it changes the way you think professionally and personally, rather than information, which is now widely available.

2026 Reality Check: Credentials Alone are Not Enough

Javor was blunt that a degree “alone” no longer carries the weight it once did; passive credential-collecting is visible to the market. The differentiator is what you do with the platform: the calibre of peers, the environment’s intensity, and the leadership and resilience built under pressure.

Misconceptions about Elite Study

Perdomo Luna challenged two common myths about Harvard: that everyone is hyper-competitive and that the experience is “just studying”. She described a collaborative culture oriented towards connection, with the deeper value coming from learning people, trajectories, and cultures, a foundation for a network that pays off over the years.

The Hidden Pressure: Too Many Opportunities

Rabah added a more nuanced point: even without intense grade competition, abundance creates its own stress, constant high-quality events, networking opportunities, and the need to choose (and accept what you miss).

Alternative Qualification Routes and What They Don’t Replace

de Mothé compared classic UK pathways with qualifying through the SQE. While qualification can open doors (particularly from civil to common law markets), she noted a downside when doing it at a distance: less immersion and fewer built-in networks, which can feel isolating.

Student Takeaways

1) Network effects compound
Across the discussion, the strongest argument for higher education was not a badge, but sustained access: to people, practitioners, debate, and reputational signalling that compounds over time. Perdomo Luna described the long-tail effect as directly working and referrals flowing back through networks years later.

2) Higher education is a career “reframe” tool
Javor’s “perspective, not knowledge” point landed as a practical rubric: if the degree changes how you analyse problems, make decisions, and position yourself, it is more likely to pay for itself than if it merely adds a line to a CV.

3) The value depends on the path you’re on
Rabah was clear that, for academia in his home context, formal study remains structurally necessary (up to PhD level), whereas in practice it may be advantageous rather than required.

4) Employer support exists, but it is rarely the starting gun
The group largely agreed that higher education is usually self-driven. Still, there were real examples of employers encouraging or even structuring it:

• Perdomo Luna described being encouraged early by an employer who saw a master’s as a meaningful step in international arbitration, particularly for cross-jurisdiction qualification.
• Rabah mentioned Dutch firms funding an LLM with a multi-year work commitment, and his university supporting his transition into an LLM when PhD funding fell away.

Practical Guidance for Law Students

• Don’t buy a degree; buy an outcome. Define what you want the programme to unlock (jurisdiction, network, specialism, leadership exposure, research track record) before you apply.
• Treat the environment as the product. The peer group, density of events, and access to practitioners are not “extras”; they are often the main ROI.
• Plan for opportunity overload. Build a selection system (themes, priority relationships, target skills) so abundance doesn’t become a distraction.
• If you qualify via alternative routes, engineer the network. SQE (and similar pathways) can deliver credentials, but you may need to deliberately recreate the immersion and community that a traditional route gives by default.