Abstract. Traditional finite-time convergence theory for numerical methods applied to stochastic differential equations(SDES) requires a global Lipschitz assumption on the drift and diffusion coefficients. In practice, many important SDE models satisfy only a local Lipschitz property and, since Brownian paths can make arbitrarily large excursions, the global Lipschitz-based theory is not directly relevant. In this work we prove strong convergence results under less restrictive conditions. First we give a convergence result for Euler-Maruyama requiring only that the SDE is locally Lipschitz and that the pth moments of the exact and numerical solution are bounded for some p>2. As an application of this general theory we show that an implicit variant of Euler-Maruyama converges if the diffusion coefficient is globally Lipschitz, but the drift coefficient satisfies only a one-sided Lipschitz condition; this is achieved by showing that the implicit method has bounded moments and may be viewed as an Euler-Maruyama approximation to a perturbed SDE of the same form. Second, we show that the optimal rate of convergence can be recovered if the drift coefficient is also assumed to behave like a polynomial.