JD Areas of Study/Curriculum
JD Areas of Study/Curriculum
Being part of this community means never having to go it alone.
Planning your future
At Moritz, we strongly encourage students to pursue a broad legal education through choosing courses that are relevant to their professional goals and appealing to their personal interests.
Every student is paired with a faculty resource advisor to help them navigate their legal education. Additionally, our extensive suite of curriculum mapping tools will help you plan your coursework based on both your academic and career interests.
Areas of Study
With more than 25 areas of study available for specialization—led by a world-class faculty comprised of the top theorists and practitioners in their fields—our students can customize their legal education to best suit their career goals and prepare themselves to become thought leaders in their professions.
Examples of courses: Administrative Law, Federal Courts, Regulatory Compliance, Food and Drug Law, Securities Regulation
Faculty experts: Bridget Dooling, Margaret Kwoka, Blaine Saito, Patricia Zettler
Examples of courses: Legal Negotiation, Arbitration, Negotiation and Mediation, Dispute Resolution Processes
Faculty experts: Sarah Cole, Bill Froehlich, Katrina Lee, Amy Schmitz
Examples of courses: Business Associations, Taxation of Business Enterprises/Corporate Tax, Business Bankruptcy, Nonprofit Law, Mergers and Acquisitions
Faculty experts: Felix Chang, Daniel Chow, Larry Garvin, Todd Starker, Rebecca Wolitz
Examples of courses: Adoption Law, Elder Law, Family and Divorce Mediation, Family Law
Faculty experts: Kimberly Jordan, Marc Spindelman
Examples of courses: Evidence, Advanced Civil Procedure: Aggregate Litigation, Appellate Practice, Twenty-First Century Lawyering, Advanced Legal Research
Faculty experts: Laura Alexander, Elizabeth Cooke, Kimberly Jordan, Margaret Kwoka, Anne Ralph, Colleen Settineri
Examples of courses: Criminal Procedure: Adjudication, Criminal Procedure: Investigation, Evidence, Federal Courts, White Collar Crime
Faculty experts: Douglas Berman, Sean Hill, Grace Li, Alan Michaels, Ric Simmons
Examples of courses: Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Election Law, First Amendment, State Constitutional and Local Government Law
Faculty experts: Terri Enns, Edward Foley, Steve Huefner
Examples of courses: Employee Benefits, Employment Discrimination Law, Dispute Resolution in Employment, Depositions
Faculty experts: Sarah Cole, L. Camille Hébert,, Courtlyn Roser-Jones
Examples of courses: Energy Law, Environmental Law
Faculty experts: Heather Payne
Examples of courses: Administrative Law, Biotechnology Law and Policy, Public Health Law, Health Equity: Law, Policy, & Determinants of Health
Faculty experts: Micah Berman, Efthimios Parasidis, Rebecca Wolitz, Patricia Zettler
Examples of courses: AI Law & Policy, Patent Law, Trademark, Copyright Law, Trade Secrets, Technology & IP Transactions
Faculty experts: Daniel Chow, Rebecca Fordon, Dennis Hirsch, Efthimios Parasidis, Dakota Rudesill, Amy Schmitz
Examples of courses: Adoption Law, Education Law, Family Law, Immigration Law, Special Education Advocacy, Topics in Disability Law and Policy
Faculty experts: Emily Brown, Kimberly Jordan, Sean Hill, and Marc Spindelman
Examples of courses: Commercial Leasing, Land Use, Real Estate Finance, Accounting for Lawyers, Franchise Law
Examples of courses: Federal Income Taxation, State and Local Taxation, Sales Law, Secured Transactions, Wills, Trusts and Estates,
Faculty experts: Felix Chang, Blaine Saito
2L & 3L Curriculum Plan Examples
These examples provide general advice and information about the courses and other offerings at the Moritz College of Law.
If you are interested in a specific curriculum, we encourage you to seek individual guidance on designing your 2L and 3L curriculum from the Assistant Dean for Students and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. They are available to meet with students for general academic advising.
Core Courses
- Criminal Law (1L Required Course)
- Criminal Procedure: Adjudication
- Criminal Procedure: Investigation
- Evidence
Recommended Courses
- Criminal Prosecution Clinic
- Criminal Defense Clinic
- Federal Courts
- Law Externship
- Trial Practice
Specialized Courses
- After Sentencing
- Children and the Law
- Computer Crime & Surveillance
- Drug Crimes
- Drug Enforcement and the Bill of Rights
- Evidence and Trial Practice
- International Criminal Law
- Justice for Children Clinic
- Marijuana Law, Policy and Reform
- Prisons, Police, and Borders
- Race to Risk Assessment
- Restorative Justice
- Sentencing Law and Policy
- Today’s Fourth Amendment
- White Collar Crime
- Wrongful Convictions
Core Courses
- Civil Procedure (1L Required Course)
- Evidence
- Federal Courts
Recommended Courses
- Advanced Civil Procedure: Aggregate Litigation
- Business Associations
- Depositions
- Judicial Externship
- Pretrial Litigation
- Trial Practice
Specialized Courses
- Advanced Legal Writing
- Advanced Legal Research / ALR: Litigation & ADR
- Appellate Practice
- Evidence & Trial Practice
- Judicial Decisionmaking
- Shareholder Litigation
- Twenty-First Century Lawyering
Core Courses
- Contracts I (1L Required Course)
- Business Bankruptcy
- Commercial Paper
- Contracts II
- Debtor and Creditor Law
- Sales
- Secured Transactions
Specialized Courses:
- Accounting for Lawyers
- Banking Law
- Business Associations
- Corporate Finance
- Corporate Governance Law
- Financial Regulation Law & Policy
- International Business Transactions
- Mergers and Acquisitions
- Nonprofit Law
- Tax Policy
- Venture Capital and Dealmaking
Want to learn more about your first year of law school?
Better known as 1L, this is when you get settled, meet your classmates, and adjust to the pace of legal education.
Assistant Dean for Students and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
We encourage you to seek individual guidance on designing your 2L and 3L curriculum from our array of faculty experts. In addition, the Assistant Dean for Students and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs are available to meet with students for general academic advising.
JD Program Learning Outcomes
Outcomes are more than your first job out of law school. It’s also an accounting of what you learned and accomplished here – the knowledge and experiences that make you hireable. Here’s a closer look at how this program will shape your mind – and your future.
1.1 Students will demonstrate proficiency in explaining and applying the core concepts in the following areas:
1.1.1. The required first-year curriculum: Torts, Civil Procedure, Contracts, Criminal Law, Legal Analysis and Writing, Legislation, and Property.
1.1.2. The upper-division required courses of Constitutional Law, Professional Responsibility, and second-year legal writing course.
1.1.3. Upper-division elective courses, which together may fit within a general area of study as identified by the list of "Course Areas" in the "Guide to the Upper-Class Curriculum."
1.2. Students will demonstrate the ability to identify ambiguous, unsettled, or open issues in the field of law and the ability to apply a reasoned perspective to analyze those issues.
1.3. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the sources, processes, and theories of law and legal change.
2.1. Students will demonstrate the ability to use effective legal research strategies to find relevant sources using fundamental tools of legal research.
2.2. Students will demonstrate the ability to assess, interpret, and synthesize legal sources relevant to resolving a legal issue, including thinking critically about how to apply those sources.
2.3. Students will demonstrate proficiency in legal practice skills appropriate to their professional goals. For instance, students may develop proficiency in skills such as fact gathering, interviewing, negotiation, dispute resolution, pre-trial and trial practice, legislative advocacy, administrative representation, regulatory enforcement, client counseling, or legal drafting. As relevant to professional goals, students will demonstrate an awareness of technologies that assist in the practice of law, such as technologies that create practice-related documents or help lawyers manage information.
3.1. Students will demonstrate the ability to engage in effective legal analysis and reasoning, including the following types of critical thinking: (1) deductive reasoning, (2) cost-benefit analysis, (3) thinking by analogy, and (4) viewing problems from competing perspectives.
3.2. Students will demonstrate the ability to investigative, analyze and resolve real or simulated client problems, which may include working with client to identify the client's interests and objectives; gathering relevant facts; adapting to changed circumstances; identifying ethical issues anticipating and assessing risks; identifying appropriate courses of action; advising the client; and implementing course of action.
4.1. Students will demonstrate the ability to communicative effectively and ethically about legal matters in writing to the variety of audiences, including objective and persuasive writing, and including drafting legal documents such as legal memoranda, briefs, contracts, and client communications.
4.2. Students will demonstrate the ability to engage effectively and ethically in factual development related to a representation, which may include skills such as developing a plan for fact development; gathering information from a variety of sources; conducting interviews; listening; and assessing the reliability of information.
4.3. Students will demonstrate the ability to communicate legal analysis effectively and ethically through speaking in contexts related to their professional goals. Common contexts include client counseling; negotiation; mediation; trial; appellate arguments; administrative proceedings; legislative advocacy; and meetings.
5.1. Students will demonstrate the ability to reflect on their own thought processes in order to improve and adapt them.
5.2. Students will demonstrate the ability to adapt their knowledge and training to new situations, including processes or areas of the law with which they are unfamiliar, through independent learning, legal research, and consultation with others.
6.1. Students will demonstrate the ability to effectively work in groups, including demonstrating that they have learned to delegate responsibility, divide work equitably, pool knowledge, challenge arguments, and refine understanding through discussion and debate.
6.2. Students will demonstrate the ability to listen to and engage with ideas and arguments that differ from their own, and demonstrate an awareness of conscious and unconscious biases that influence their interactions with clients, peers, judges and others.
6.3. Student will demonstrate the ability to listen to, communicate with, and engage with others in a professional and respectful manner.
7.1. Students will demonstrate an understanding of and an ability to conform to the rules of professional conduct by identifying, explaining, and applying the applicable rules of professional conduct.
7.2. Students will demonstrate the ability to communicate their advice and analysis in a manner appropriate to the particular needs of a client, and will demonstrate the ability to adapt their advice as the client's needs evolve.
7.3. Students will demonstrate an awareness of a lawyer's responsibility to seek improvement of the law, access to the legal system, the administration of justice, and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession.
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