Experience in the preparation, research, and writing of an appellate brief and in oral argument before an appellate court. Participation in the intramural Stanley Moot Court competition is an option in the Fall. This course satisfies the Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research III Requirement.
This is an introductory course on Environmental Justice Law. Although no federal environmental justice laws have been enacted, federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have made efforts to work with other federal agencies to integrate environmental justice into policies and practices. Environmental justice theory and practice begins with the recognition that environmental goods (such as clean air and water) and environmental harms (such as toxic waste) are not always distributed equitably among populations. This course will examine the various bases for these disparate impacts and will look for solutions grounded in law, policy, and practice.
This course focuses on legal drafting in the business setting. Students will be required to draft and evaluate typical documents including corporate documents, loan and purchase contracts, partnership agreements, and employment agreements.
This "best practices" course introduces students to commercial law and to the structuring, negotiation, drafting, and review of common commercial agreements. These agreements include: (1) non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, (2) employment agreements, (3) services agreements, (4) agreements for the sale of goods, and (5) lending and security agreements. In addition to exploring applicable law and theory, students analyze, draft, redline, and actively discuss actual commercial contracts. In so doing, students explore both the specific effects of various contractual provisions and the potential broader commercial implications of such provisions. If not taken to satisfy LAWR III, this course will also satisfy the Experiential Learning requirement. This course is a writing course with no exam. Contracts I and II are prerequisites.
This course is an intensive writing course that simulates the work of a judicial clerk. Students research, draft, and edit a bench memo, a majority and dissenting opinion in a state appeal, and an order in a federal trial court case. Students also observe an oral argument. Guest speakers (judges and law clerks) address students several times during the semester.
This course is a 2-credit, seminar-sized, workshop-style legal analysis and writing course that focuses on public interest legal writing, working with underrepresented clients, and social justice/poverty themes.
This writing-intensive course focuses on several hot topics in health law, including public health issues, physician employment contracts, regenerative medicine and the right to try, and telemedicine. The content units will be taught through a series of simulations and case files. While learning substantive health care law, the students will also draft and/or critique both transactional and litigation-based documents.
This course is designed to satisfy LAWR III. It is geared to teach drafting from the point of view of a commercial real estate attorney. In this context, drafting includes both drafting your own documents, as wells as re-drafting documents submitted to you by other parties (including how to spot issues when re-drafting a document). The types of real estate documents that will be covered include a broad sampling of purchase contracts, leases, loan documents, and deeds/easements. The class will review core concepts of real estate law that must be considered in drafting a binding and enforceable real estate contract.
This course will give students further opportunities to develop their legal writing and analysis skills in the context of analyzing seemingly race neutral issues using Critical Race Theory (CRT) techniques. Such techniques include not only considering the race of those involved in the litigation, but also racial stereotyping, the case’s historical context, implicit bias, and other relevant factors that might implicate racial issues. The goal is to help students understand how the tenets of CRT can be useful as an analytical tool in crafting a legal analysis or argument.
This course is intended to provide students with a general understanding of some of the skills required in transactional law (with a focus on entertainment), including how to analyze, edit, and draft purchase agreements, employment agreements, cease and desist letters, sweepstakes rules, guest releases, and media licenses. This course cannot be taken if you have taken LAW 257 Business Drafting.
This course offers an overview of the historical, legal, and policy framework for food and agriculture in the United States. Agricultural and food laws and regulations play a vital role in determining both the health outcomes for our nation and the level of environmental impact on shared natural resources such as air, water, soil, and biodiversity. The course discusses federal environmental statutes in the context of food and agricultural production and provides an introduction to the U.S. Farm Bill, pesticides, farmed animal welfare, genetically modified foods, food access, food safety, and labeling schemes.
Legal drafting in the litigation setting. Students will be required to draft and evaluate typical litigation documents. Students can take both Litigation Drafting and Pre-trial Practice and Procedure.
Designed to give students further opportunities to develop their legal writing, research, and analysis skills in the context of preparing a securities offering document (i.e., a prospectus). Such offering documents contain disclosures about the issuer of the bond, stocks, or other securities, including (i) material risks to the business; (ii) an overview of the business (history, products, material property, etc.); (iii) a discussion of result results and financial position; and (iv) standard language provided in the context of similar securities offerings. The goal is to understand how legal counsel prepares the securities offering documents drawing on various sources of information and with reference to SEC rules and client instructions.
This course focuses on the negotiation and drafting of commercial real estate leases from the initial letter of intent stage to the final lease closing. Items studied and drafting exercises include: (1) letters of intent, (2) brokerage agreements, (3) commercial leases and lease provisions at various levels of the negotiation process, (4) subordination, nondisturbance, and attornment agreements, (5) estoppel certificates, and (6) lease memoranda. The course covers various forms of commercial leases, including ground leases, retail leases, subleases, and license and occupancy agreements. This course also focuses on professionalism and ethics in the negotiation and drafting process. In addition to learning applicable law, students receive regular evaluations of substantial drafting and negotiation assignments typical of those encountered in actual practice. The negotiation and drafting skills learned in this course apply to other areas of commercial practice. P-LAW 111.
This writing-intensive course focuses on several hot topics in health law, including public health issues, physician employment contracts, regenerative medicine and the right to try, and telemedicine. The content units will be taught through a series of simulations and case files. While learning substantive healthcare law, the students will also draft and/or critique both transactional and litigation-based documents.
The course will teach and compare French, American, and EU tort doctrine in a variety of areas such as (1) pure economic loss (both in negligence and intentional torts like fraud/intentional interference with contractual relations, etc.); (2) liability for traffic accidents, specifically autonomous vehicles; (3) product liability (including artificial intelligence); (4) liability for violations of privacy; (5) liability in tort between contracting parties (the borderline between tort and contract law); (6) damages/punitive damages; (7) governmental immunity; and (8) systemic topics such as contingency fees arrangements, the payment of legal fees, public advocacy, access to justice, and the various ethical and justice concerns that arise in each country’s approach. Learning objectives include not only helping students gain an understanding of tort doctrine in these jurisdictions but also developing the skills necessary to apply and critique the doctrine to the facts of new cases. Special attention will be brought to critiquing American tort law from a European perspective—what are we getting right/wrong? What societal goals are we sacrificing that Europeans have embraced? Vice versa? What are the relative merits of structural differences in access to justice, procedural requirements, jury v. bench trials, extensive judicial opinions, etc.? We will also explore ethical and character issues to which each system gives rise.