Curriculum

FIRST-YEAR CURRICULUM

UCI Law will have an innovative curriculum designed to prepare students for the practice of law at the highest levels of the profession. The first-year curriculum will teach students areas of legal doctrine traditionally taught in the first year, but in an innovative way that focuses on teaching methods of legal analysis and skills that all lawyers constantly use.

Students thus will receive an education that includes the traditional areas of legal doctrine, but in an innovative context designed to prepare them for practice in the 21st century. Many other features of the first year will be designed to prepare students for the practice of law. All first-year students will be assigned a lawyer mentor and will be required to spend a specified number of hours observing that lawyer at work.

There will be an active pro bono program where students will have the opportunity to do volunteer work in many different contexts beginning in their first year. Also, as members of the inaugural class, students will be actively engaged in helping to create the institutions of the new law school.

All first-year students will enroll in the following courses:

FALL SEMESTER 2009

Law 507A - Legal Profession I (2 units)
This course, which will be part of both semesters, is designed to prepare students to chart rewarding and responsible careers in law. Drawing from various disciplines, including economics, history, sociology, and psychology, we will teach students about the variety of practice settings in which lawyers work and the professional opportunities and challenges of each. Among the practice settings we will consider are small, medium, and large firms, prosecutors' offices, public defender organizations, corporate counsel offices, nonprofit advocacy groups, legal aid, and the judiciary. We will consider ethical dilemmas that lawyers confront in each of these settings and survey some of the law that governs lawyers and that is particularly salient in each practice type. We will convene panels of lawyers from each type of practice to talk about their work and careers, the pressures they face, how they resolve such dilemmas, and where they find satisfaction. Students will participate in role-playing exercises based on typical problems confronted in practice. The course will also address larger issues facing the profession as a whole – including the legal services market and its regulation, the distribution of legal services, the profession's demographics, social structure, and working conditions, and the implications of globalization for the profession.

Law 506A - Lawyering Skills I (3 units)
This course, which will be part of both semesters, will focus on teaching skills that all lawyers use, such as fact investigation, interviewing, legal writing and analysis, legal research, negotiation and oral advocacy.

Law 500 - Common Law Analysis: Private Ordering (4 units)
This course will focus primarily on the common law of contracts to teach this method of analysis, in which the law is derived from judicial decisions rather than statutes or the Constitution.

Law 504 - Procedural Analysis (4 units)
This course will use civil procedure as the foundation for teaching students about areas of law in which there are procedural rules, and how analysis and arguments are made in such contexts.

Law 503 - Statutory Analysis (3 units)
This course will use criminal law as a basis for teaching students the methods employed in all areas of law for analyzing statutes.

SPRING SEMESTER 2010

Law 507B - Legal Profession II (2 units)
Continuation of fall semester course.

Law 506B - Lawyering Skills II (3 units)
In the spring semester of this two-semester course, all students will have gained experience in a legal clinic setting, where they will conduct intake interviews of actual clients for the Legal Aid Society of Orange County.

Law 501 - Common Law Analysis: Public Ordering (4 units)
This course will use torts as a way of further examining the common law, and how lawyers reason and develop arguments in this area.

Law 502 - Constitutional Analysis (4 units)
This course will teach students basic areas of constitutional law such as separation of powers, federalism, and individual liberties. It will focus on how constitutional arguments are made, and how courts and lawyers analyze constitutional issues.

Law 505 - International Legal Analysis (3 units)
This course will introduce students to international law and the ways that analyses in this area are similar to and different from analysis in other areas of law.

our difference

“The traditional first-year legal

writing course will be reoriented as a course on lawyering skills. To pick one example, part of the course should teach fact investigation, a crucial skill that is all too often ignored in law schools. Also, I have proposed that the faculty develop a two-week course at the beginning of the second semester where students take a class on contract drafting or negotiation or trial practice so that skills training is part of the first year. The upper-level curriculum will include skills classes that prepare students for the top level of practice in areas such as business law, intellectual property and litigation.”

Erwin Chemerinsky
Founding Dean