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Do you want to pursue a PhD in Law at the University of Bonn? Here you can find step-by-step guidance on what you need to do—from securing a supervisor’s commitment, to applying, to admission—and which documents you must submit with your application:

I. Assignment of a professor from the Department of Law of the University of Bonn to supervise the project 

The complete application documents must only be submitted to the Dean if they also contain the written confirmation of a professor of the Department of Law of the University of Bonn. Since supervision is voluntary, it is strongly recommended that applicants first contact the professors of the Department of Law in order to obtain the necessary confirmation of supervision from them. Once you have received your confirmation of mentoring, you should compile the remaining application documents.

II. Application and Admission

The complete application documents are to be sent to the Dean of Faculty of Law and Economics, who in turn forwards them to the Doctoral Committee of the Faculty of Law for a final decision on admission to the doctorate. After the doctoral committee has made its decision, the applicant will be informed of this in writing by the dean. The application must contain a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae in tabular form, certified copies of all original degree certificates as well as at least two letters of recommendation, which should preferably come from professors of the respective home university. If the original documents are not in English, German or French, they must be translated into one of these languages. The faculty reserves the right to demand further certifications, also in the form of apostilles. If the dissertation is to be written in English or the disputation is to take place in English, applicants must enclose a written application to the Dean with their application.

What qualifications do you need for a PhD in Law at the University of Bonn? Here you can find which academic degrees and language skills are required and what options you have to meet the admission requirements:

I. Academic degrees required 

Foreign students who are interested in a doctorate in law can choose between two ways of proving their admission requirements according to our doctoral regulations, which can be found on our homepage under the following link: https://www.rsf.uni-bonn.de/de/promotion/dateien/lesefassung_promtionsordnung_jura_2025_en.pdf

(1) Either a Bachelor's degree of at least three years and a subsequent Master's degree at the respective home university with the overall ECTS grade A or B or at least „magna cum laude" is required.
(2) Or the „Master in German Law" course offered at our faculty was successfully completed with at least „magna cum laude": www.jura.uni-bonn.de/studium/studieninformationen/masterstudiengang-deutsches-recht.

II. Language skills

The dissertation can be written in English, if this has been requested in the application and if a written summary of the thesis in German is attached. The same applies to the disputation, which can be held in English under the same conditions. Of course, a good knowledge of German is still practically indispensable for a longer study stay in Germany.