After the first year, all courses are elective, with the exceptions of Client Counseling, Legal Ethics, a seminar requirement, and a writing requirement.

Second Year Curriculum

The principal purposes of our second year curriculum are to:

• expose students to a wide range of important legal subjects and problems not treated in the first year
• develop further the students' competence in legal research, writing, and advocacy
• enhance the substantive and procedural knowledge, legal reasoning and persuasive argument methodology and skills obtained in the first year
• prepare students for real life through simulated performance of lawyering skills

Third Year Curriculum

The principal purposes of our third year curriculum are to provide:

• advanced level study of specific areas or problems of a particular field of substantive law
• opportunities for supervised experience in the performance of lawyering tasks, either in a course devoted to a particular skill or in the actual or simulated representation of a client
• further development of the basic lawyering skills
• opportunities for tutorial type programs with individual professors in areas of special interest to the student

The major difference between the second and third year curriculum is that the former gives primarily (but not exclusively) breadth of coverage, while the third year is devoted primarily to in-depth coverage of limited areas of subjects previously covered in an overview course and to courses that are lawyering and process-oriented, including skills, problem, and planning courses. This is not to say that a course that concentrates on breadth coverage cannot or should not be taken in the third year. It is fully expected that there will be courses of both types taken in the second and third years.

Seminar & Writing Requirements:

Every student must successfully complete one seminar and one of the following options:

• a casenote or comment for a law review or journal
• the writing requirements for the Lexis-Nexis Moot Court Competition
• a Drafting course
• an Individual Research Project
• a second seminar

Our writing program mandates that each student complete at least two writing experiences of designated types in the last two years of law school.