A Curriculum Based In Success
Advanced Legal Analysis
This required course will introduce you to the bar exam, review material tested on the bar exam, and teach you important skills in reading, analyzing, and answering bar exam questions. The course uses a learn-by-doing approach. Written homework assignments include multiple choice questions and essay questions. These will be submitted, graded, and returned online before most classes and will then form the basis for class discussion and review. Students will also be assigned online video review. The course will refresh your recollection of selected topics within three of MBE subjects, Contracts, Evidence and Torts. Students will learn how the bar examiners test these topics and will learn how to study and to apply their knowledge to bar exam questions. Students must successfully complete both ALA I and ALA II to graduate.
Anti-Racism and Cultural Competency (ARCC)
Students must complete one ARCC course by choosing from among those electives that provide an opportunity to understand law's relationship to racial and other forms of inequality and/or cultivate awareness of cultural and other barriers that may constrain access to justice.
Business Organizations
This course focuses on the fundamental conceptual framework of business organizations law including the formation and conduct of business in the partnership, corporate, and limited liability company forms. It provides an introduction to the terminology of business organizations and finance, and transmits some sense of what a business lawyer does. It also engages in questions of ethics, justice, professional responsibility and critical analysis of numerous aspects of business law.
Civil Procedure
The object of this course is to introduce the student to the civil litigation process, including the attendant jurisdictional questions, court organization, and pleadings and rules of practice in state and federal courts. In addition, an analysis of the litigation process is undertaken, with emphasis on discovery, pre-trial procedures, trial, judgment, and appellate review of the decision.
Constitutional Law
A study of the allocation of governmental authority and the limitations on that authority as defined by the Constitution of the United States. The course will deal with the problems of defining the scope of federal power, the relationship between the federal government and the states, the scope of state authority, and the rights of individuals with an emphasis on those rights guaranteed by the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution.
Contracts
A study of the methods and policies under which the rights and duties of contracting parties are achieved. Attention is given also to the promissory relationships reached by the parties with emphasis on how these relationships are interpreted, limited, transferred, discharged, breached, and enforced. The ethical considerations of the contracting parties as well as professional and business utilization of contracts are also studied.
Criminal Law
This course deals with the competing interests and policies that come into action when the individual clashes with society. The course also explores the underlying philosophical premises of various penal rules. The theories and purposes of punishment, the relationship between law and morality, definitions of criminal intent, principles of necessity, justification and excuse, and inchoate crime and group criminality may also be studied.
Evidence
This course is an introduction to the basic rules of evidence, which govern the proof of facts in criminal and civil trials, with a focus on the Federal Rules of Evidence. Topics covered include the role of the judge and jury; relevance; hearsay and its exceptions; character evidence; the competency, examination and impeachment of witnesses. Classroom method focuses on discussion of selected problems and cases, and aims at providing a foundation for advanced courses in evidence (such as Advanced Topics in Evidence and the Scientific Evidence seminar), trial advocacy, and criminal procedure, while providing all students with a common grounding in the basic rules of evidence.
Income Tax (or Legislative & Administrative Process)
A study of the codified law as it relates to the federal taxation of the income of individuals, this course emphasizes the concepts of gross income, taxable income, and deductions. Special emphasis is given to the federal tax policy considerations inherent in resolving tax issues. A survey of selected topics such as the tax consequences of divorce and administrative practice before the Internal Revenue Service and the Tax Court may be included in the course.
Introduction to the Law
Introduction to the Law is a one-credit course required in the first year for all entering students, offered prior to the beginning of the first term, and graded on a pass-fall basis. This class introduces students to the study of law. It is designed to give students the knowledge and skills that will enable them to get the most out of their other first-year courses. The goals of the course include introducing students to the purposes and pedagogy of law school, providing techniques and strategies for learning the law, and providing information on background concepts. Students will gain an understanding of the American legal system, explore the function of case law and how it relates to other sources of the law, and learn to actively engage in case analysis.
Introduction to the Legal Profession
Introduction to the Legal Profession is a one-credit required course for all first year students, offered prior to the beginning of the second term. This skills course is designed to introduce students to aspects of legal practice through a simulated client representation. The goals of the course include helping students develop an understanding of the importance of professionalism, legal ethics, and competency and to provide opportunities for students to engage in hands-on lawyering skills.
Lawyering Skills I and Lawyering Skills II
Lawyering Skills I and II are required first-year courses designed to teach students the basic techniques of legal research, legal analysis, legal writing, and oral advocacy--essential tools of the lawyering profession. The full-time Legal Research and Writing faculty work closely with students in smaller classroom settings introducing case briefing, case synthesis, and analysis through a series of research and writing assignments. Students learn how to research legal issues, frame legal arguments, and analyze legal problems. In addition to learning traditional research methods, students are also trained to use computer-assisted legal research including Lexis and Westlaw. This full-year course culminates in an oral argument in a simulated court setting, during which each student argues a motion based on a brief written by the student.
Legislative & Administrative Process (or Income Tax)
Legislative and Administrative Process introduces students to statutes and administrative regulations, the foundations of public law and policy. Using the federal system as the model, students study the allocation of power to all three branches of government: the process by which Congress creates legislation and authorizes administrative agencies to enforce those laws; the process by which those agencies make and enforce regulations pursuant to their statutory mandates; and the role of courts to ensure that agencies have properly interpreted their statutory mandates and followed procedural requirements for promulgating and enforcing regulations. Students will also examine the role that lawyers play in terms of advocacy for, implementation of, challenges to, and defense of public policy.
Professional Responsibility
This course examines the legal and ethical issues that lawyers confront regularly as they perform their unique, and often conflicting, role in today's society. The course addresses the nature and scope of the attorney's responsibilities and obligations to the administration of justice, to clients, to society, and to the profession. The course examines the application of the laws regulating the conduct of lawyers in relation to the development of professional ethics.
Property
Starting with the historical evolution of the concepts involved in real and personal property, this course studies the rights and duties of owners and possessors. Also included within the scope of study are: evidence of ownership or right to possession, methods of title assurance, commercial and noncommercial transfers of interests in property, and the rescission, modification, interpretation and performance of transfer agreements and documents. This course may also explore conflicts between private ownership of property and community needs, the nature and purposes of types of shared ownership of property, present and future interests in property, and private and public controls on the use of property.
Torts
This is a course in the civil liability for harm inflicted on another. Included in the study of the law of torts are liability without fault; negligent, reckless, and intentional acts which inflict harm; violation of the right of privacy; libel and slander; and the liability of owners or occupiers of land.