How to Build a Career in Space Law
The field people imagine and the field that hires are different. Four routes in, what actually differentiates candidates, and an honest answer on whether the specialist LLM is worth it.
The honest starting point for anyone thinking about space law as a career is that the field people imagine and the field that exists are different.
The imagined version involves treaty interpretation, arguments about lunar sovereignty and appearances before international bodies. That work exists. There are perhaps a few dozen people in the world who do it as the majority of their practice, most of them academics or government legal advisers.
The version that hires is regulatory and commercial. Getting a client through an FAA launch licence, an FCC space station application or an ITU filing. Negotiating a launch services agreement. Working out whether a component is on the US Munitions List. Advising on whether a constellation will fall inside the EU Space Act. That work has grown a great deal in the last decade and is still growing.
If the second version sounds less interesting than the first, that is worth knowing before you invest in an LLM.
The four doors in
Satellite and telecoms regulatory
The most direct route. Firms with established satellite regulatory practices, mostly in Washington DC, London and Brussels, handle FCC space and earth station licensing, market access, ITU coordination through national administrations, and now the transition from FCC Part 25 to the new Part 100 adopted in July 2026.
What you need: telecoms regulatory experience, comfort with technical filings, patience for procedural detail. A background in communications law transfers almost completely.
Aviation and transport regulatory
Launch licensing is administratively closer to aviation than to anything else. The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation sits inside the FAA, uses FAA rulemaking machinery, and Part 450 reads like an aviation safety rule because it is one. The UK route is the same, with the Civil Aviation Authority as the space regulator under the Space Industry Act 2018.
What you need: aviation regulatory experience, or a willingness to learn safety case analysis and risk thresholds. We set out how Part 450 works here.
Government contracts
A large share of the money in the sector is government money. NASA, ESA, national defence procurement, and the contracts underneath them. Firms with strong government contracts practices ended up with strong space practices almost by accident.
What you need: procurement law, cost accounting standards, bid protest experience.
Export control
Spacecraft and their components sit on the US Munitions List under ITAR Category XV or on the Commerce Control List in the 9×515 series. Every hardware transaction, every foreign employee, every technical exchange runs through this analysis. It is unglamorous and consistently in demand.
What you need: ITAR and EAR experience. It is one of the few areas where junior lawyers get real responsibility quickly, because the volume is high.
Where the jobs sit
| Employer type | What the work looks like |
|---|---|
| Law firms | Regulatory filings, transactions, financings, disputes. Concentrated in DC, London, Brussels, Paris, Luxembourg, Tokyo, Bengaluru. |
| Operators and manufacturers | In-house counsel handling licensing, contracts, export control and increasingly EU compliance. Growing fastest. |
| Regulators | FCC Space Bureau, FAA AST, Office of Space Commerce, UK CAA, EUSPA, IN-SPACe, national agencies. |
| Insurance and finance | Broker and underwriter legal teams, satellite finance, export credit agencies. |
| Government legal service | Treaty work, COPUOS delegations, national space legislation. |
| Academia and think tanks | The public international law version of the field. Smaller and harder to enter. |
On the specialist LLM question
The established programmes are McGill’s Institute of Air and Space Law, Leiden’s International Institute of Air and Space Law, the University of Mississippi’s Center for Air and Space Law, and a growing number of newer offerings.
What they give you is real: a working knowledge of the treaty framework, the vocabulary to hold a conversation with people already in the field, a supervised piece of writing you can point to, and a network that is genuinely useful because the field is small.
What they do not give you is a licensing practice. Nobody hires a lawyer to file an FCC application because they wrote a thesis on Article II. Firms hire regulatory experience and then teach the space part.
The most reliable pattern we see is people who build a transferable regulatory skill first and add the space specialism, rather than the other way round. If you are choosing between an LLM and two years in a telecoms regulatory team, take the two years.
If you are already in practice and want the LLM for credibility and network, that calculation is different and often worth it.
What actually differentiates candidates
Three things, in order.
Technical literacy. Not an engineering degree. The ability to read a mission profile, understand what an orbit regime implies, follow a debris analysis without needing every term explained, and ask an engineer a sensible question. This is the single most commented-on difference between lawyers who thrive in the sector and lawyers who do not.
Regulatory stamina. The work involves long documents, iterative agency engagement and long timelines. A Part 450 application for a novel vehicle can take well over a year from first engagement. People who need fast closure are unhappy here.
Visible output. The field is small enough that writing gets read. A well argued case note on a decision that has just landed, or a clear explainer on a rule change, will be read by a meaningful percentage of the people who work in this area. That is not true in most practice areas and it is a genuine advantage for anyone starting out.
A practical first year
If you are starting from zero and want to be credible in twelve months, this is what we would suggest.
Read the Outer Space Treaty, then the Liability Convention, then the Registration Convention. Total reading time under two hours. Our article by article walk through covers what matters.
Read 14 CFR Part 450 and 47 CFR Part 25. Not to memorise them, but to understand the shape of a licensing regime and the distance between the treaty layer and the working layer.
Follow the live files. As at August 2026 those are the FCC’s Part 100 transition, the FAA’s environmental waiver proposal, the EU Space Act trilogue, and the COPUOS space resources principles due in 2026 and 2027. Being current on four live files makes you more useful in a conversation than knowing the treaties well.
Write something. A case note on the DISH consent decree or the Dark-Sky decision, an explainer on the five year deorbit rule, an analysis of what the EU Space Act would mean for a non-EU operator. Then send it to people. This works far better than it should.
Go where the people are. The International Astronautical Congress, the International Institute of Space Law’s events, the Manfred Lachs Moot if you are still a student, and the national space agency and regulator briefings which are usually open and usually under-attended by lawyers.
A note on where you are
The sector is concentrated but less than it was. Washington DC remains the centre of gravity for launch and satellite regulatory work. London has become the largest single source of space insurance capacity and the UK CAA is now an active launch regulator. Luxembourg built a space resources practice around its 2017 law. Bengaluru and Delhi are growing quickly since the Indian Space Policy 2023 made IN-SPACe the single window authorising body and FDI rules were liberalised in 2024. Tokyo, Sydney, Wellington and Abu Dhabi all have working regimes and therefore working practices.
If you are not in one of those places, the writing route matters more, and it works.
Questions people actually ask
What degree do you need for space law?
A law degree and admission in a jurisdiction that regulates space activity. A specialist LLM in air and space law is common but not required. Employers in the commercial part of the sector hire for regulatory, contracts and export control experience and teach the space specialism on the job.
Is space law a good career?
It is a growing area with a small talent pool, which is a favourable combination. The realistic caveat is that most of the work is regulatory and transactional rather than the treaty interpretation people imagine, and the pure public international law roles are few and mostly academic or governmental.
How much do space lawyers earn?
Compensation tracks the underlying practice area rather than the space subject matter. A satellite regulatory partner at a major firm earns what a telecoms regulatory partner earns. In-house counsel at operators track technology sector in-house scales. Academic and government roles pay accordingly.
Where can I study space law?
The established programmes include the McGill Institute of Air and Space Law in Montreal, the Leiden International Institute of Air and Space Law, and the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi, which publishes the Journal of Space Law. A number of universities in Europe, India and Australia now offer specialist modules or degrees.
Can engineers move into space law?
Yes, and technical background is a real advantage in this field. The route still requires a law qualification. Engineers who convert tend to move quickly in licensing and safety case work because they can read the underlying analysis rather than relying on translation.
