Required First-Year Course

Legal Research, Analysis, and Communication spans both semesters of the first year and introduces students to the key analytical and communication skills that every lawyer needs.

Team-taught in small sections by a legal-writing professor and a research librarian, this course covers predictive writing, persuasive writing, legal research and oral advocacy. It also provides an introduction to contract drafting, alternative dispute resolution, fact gathering and client interviewing. 

The first semester culminates in our unique Escape Room review-session experience, where teams of students collaborate and use their legal-writing and legal-research knowledge to solve clues and “escape” the semester. The final exam for the course, administered at the end of the second semester, mimics the Multistate Performance Test; as such, this exam launches the students into their summer jobs and clerkships with an intense, independent writing and analytical experience.

For Non-U.S. Lawyers (Advanced JD Admissions)

Introduction to Lawyering Skills in the United States Legal System offers students who already have law degrees from other countries a systematic and detailed introduction to common-law reasoning and effective legal communication in the U.S system.

For LLM Students

LLM students have their own class, Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research, which teaches international lawyers the fundamentals of written and oral advocacy geared toward the rhetorical preferences of U.S. legal clients and courts, and to become comfortable with the rules of professionalism that apply to legal communication.

Electives

Upper-class students may choose from among several elective courses to expand upon the skills and techniques that they learned in Legal Research, Analysis, and Communication:

• Advanced Legal Writing and Introduction to Appellate Advocacy

• Intensive Legal Research and Writing

• Samuel M. Fegtly Moot Court Competition

• Moot Court Board

• Judicial Opinion Writing

• Contract Drafting