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Course Descriptions
Required Courses
Civil Procedure/Alternative Dispute Resolution I
LAW 511 3 credits
Exploration of the nature and structure of dispute resolution systems, with a focus on formal adjudicatory procedure for civil lawsuits while exposing students to the spectrum and interrelation of dispute resolution systems. Includes jurisdiction, venue, rules of procedure, and choice of law.
Civil Procedure/Alternative Dispute Resolution II
LAW 531 3 credits
Continuation of Civil Procedure and Alternative Dispute Resolution I. Includes pretrial practice, pretrial dispositions, and court-imposed alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.
Constitutional Law I
LAW 517 3 credits
Role of the courts in the federal system, distribution of powers between state and federal governments, and the role of procedure in litigation of constitutional questions.
Constitutional Law II
LAW 624 3 credits
Examination of fundamental protections for persons, property, and political and social rights. Full-time students must complete this course before the end of the second year; and part-time students must take this course before the end of the third year.
Contracts I
LAW 503 5 credits
Overview of basic contract law. Exploration of common law legal method and the structure of Article II of the Uniform Commercial Code in the context of issues of contract formation and interpretation.
Criminal Law
LAW 616 3 credits
Introduction to criminal law with emphasis on principles of criminal liability.
Lawyering Process I
LAW 505 3 credits
Provides students, through course work and simulated cases, the opportunity to examine the relationship between legal analysis and lawyering tasks such as effective legal research strategies, legal writing, oral advocacy, and client interviewing and counseling, with an emphasis on professionalism and ethics.
Lawyering Process II
LAW 515 3 credits
Students continue to develop skills in legal research, analysis, reasoning and writing. In Lawyering Process II, students learn to write persuasively as an advocate, through increasingly complex simulations that focus on analyzing statutory and administrative materials. Assignments include letters to clients and attorneys, a trial court memorandum and an appellate brief and are staged to allow for extensive individual feedback and instruction during the writing process. Each student also makes an oral argument to a mock appellate court.
Third Semester Lawyering Process Requirement (See Sections 5.02 and 6.03)
Lawyering Process III
The final semester of the Lawyering Process program provides students with an advanced legal writing experience. Each semester at least three sections of LP III will be offered. Students may choose from a menu of courses so they can focus on the types of legal writing that most interest them. Courses will include advanced advocacy with a focus on appellate court, trial court or administrative agency settings; advanced analysis and writing; basic legal drafting; special topics in drafting, which may focus on transactional drafting, litigation drafting, legislative drafting or ADR drafting; writing in law practice, a simulation course with a variety of writing and drafting assignments; and judicial opinion writing. In each section, students will have multiple assignments, will write successive drafts of at least one major assignment and receive extensive individual feedback and instruction. Students may take more than one LP III offering but must complete at least one before their final semester. Courses that will satisfy this requirement are Law 610 Advanced Legal Analysis and Writing: Special Topics, Law 669, Legal Drafting, Law 671 Judicial Writing, and Law 718 Advanced Advocacy: Special Topics.
Professional Responsibility
LAW 613 3 credits
This course examines the law governing lawyers, the rules that govern how members of the legal profession, including judges as well as lawyers, may or must behave. Sources of these rules are many - the Constitution, statutes, procedural, evidentiary, and court rules, and rules of professional conduct.
Property I
LAW 521 3 credits
Acquisitions of property interests, estates in land and future interests, and landlord-tenant issues.
Property II
LAW 525 2 credits
Real estate transactions, easements and other servitudes, and public land use regulation.
Torts
LAW 523 4 credits
Law of civil injuries, including legal protection of personality, property, and relational interests against physical, economic, and emotional harms. Emphasis on intentional torts, negligence and strict liability.
Note: 500 level courses are prerequisites to all 600 and 700 level courses. In addition, in the semester a student registers for a course to fulfill the writing requirement, the student must attend two scholarly writing workshops.
