This one-credit course will examine how we, as members of the legal profession, engage with the mass media. Students will examine assigned readings and recordings from news organizations, frauds, propagandists, and scam artists throughout the history of mass communication in the English-speaking world. They will then practice thinking critically about how bias and misinformation can affect the development of law.  This course is for CPT applicants only.

Are you considering business law?  Whether you work at a law firm, for a business, or as a sole proprietor – if your client is a business you WILL work with in-house counsel.  This class provides invaluable knowledge about the role of in-house counsel and gives you greater insight into your future clients.  It is designed to provide students with a mixture of practical skills, opportunities to use and apply them as they learn to navigate some of the challenges corporate counsel face.  Students will learn to translate their legal knowledge into client-friendly communications, present to an audience of non-lawyers, develop remote working networking and professionalism strategies, and have opportunities to interact with legal counsel at a variety of corporations. To meet these objectives students will complete Harvard Business School case studies, read articles directed at practicing attorneys, give presentations and work through training modules. 

This course provides a comprehensive overview of mediation and arbitration within the broader field of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). It introduces the theoretical foundations of mediation and arbitration, including negotiation theory, communication strategy, and the mediator and arbitrator function within legal, institutional, and ethical frameworks. Students will engage in structured, simulation-based exercises designed to cultivate professional competence in managing disputes, facilitating dialogue, and drafting settlement agreements. The course emphasizes practical application through extensive role-playing, as mediator, arbitrator, and counsel, across multiple practice areas, including personal injury, family law, and business or commercial disputes. Guest lectures from experienced mediators, arbitrators, and counsel, will offer insight into current practices and professional pathways in these areas of ADR.

What is the law’s role in both perpetuating and eradicating injustice against sexual minorities (lesbians, gays, bisexual, and asexual persons) and gender minorities (non-cisgender persons)? This weekly seminar will examine the complex and evolving relationships between law, LGBTQ status, and anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Across the semester, we will work through three interrelated projects: (1) Surveying the history of LGBTQ rights litigation, focusing on major cases, legal strategies, key arguments, doctrinal issues, and their sociopolitical contexts; (2) Examining how anti-equality campaigns have used the law to generate, maintain, and legitimize injustices against gender and sexual minorities, even as LGBTQ persons have used the law to pursue equal citizenship; and (3) Mapping the extra-legal ideologies, narratives, and assumptions underlying contemporary legal disputes over LGBTQ equality. We’ll complete the projects by working through key flashpoints, including sex-segregated facilities and athletics, same-sex marriage, bans on military service, healthcare access, and religious exemptions from antidiscrimination protections.

Advanced Dispute Resolution team is a graded experiential advocacy course conducted in the fall (two hours) and spring (two hours) semesters for a total of four credit hours.  Enrollment is by audition only.  Per ABA Standard 310, to earn two credit hours per semester, each student must account for 90 hours of time. 

This skills-based course will serve as an introduction to performing jury selection at either a criminal or civil trial.  Students will learn the basic rules that govern jury selection, along with strategies and best practices for conducing jury selection. This course will consist of classroom discussion on jury selection best practices and will also require students to participate in a number of jury selection exercises, both performing jury selection and serving as potential jurors.

This skills-based course will serve as an introduction to preparing and conducting examinations of expert witnesses involving scientific evidence.  The course will introduce students to the unique challenges attendant to locating an expert witness, preparing them, and then direct examining them, as well as the unique challenges of working with scientific evidence via expert witness testimony.  It also introduces students to the difficulty in opposing expert witnesses, inclusive of preparing to cross-examine them and then actually cross-examining them.  This course will consist of classroom discussion on all facets of working with expert witnesses and will also require students to practice preparing expert witnesses, conducting direct examinations of experts, and cross-examining experts.

This seminar, led by Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, explores selected topics in ethics and professional responsibility from a judicial perspective and the perspective of counsel providing individual representation to clients, including those accused of crimes. In this seminar, students will engage in robust discussion, work through ethical problems individually and in small groups, and consider how their future legal careers will reflect the highest ethical values required by the profession. Guest speakers will include judges and lawyers who confront issues of professional responsibility in their decision-making and practice.

Trial by jury in criminal and civil cases is a central component of the American legal system. However, over time, state and private actors have dramatically reduced the jury’s scope. Today, juries resolve only a small percentage of cases in the criminal and civil justice systems. In this short course, we will discuss the multiple causes of the decline in jury trials. We will examine jury selection and the conduct of jury trials to assess how well juries perform their democratic function. Finally, we will explore potential reforms that could help to restore the jury to its important place in our system of justice.

This course explores the role of the securities lawyer as a strategic advisor in the modern public company. Students will learn how disclosure, corporate governance, and regulatory compliance intersect in real-world practice through the lens of in-house counsel and outside advisors. Each week focuses on a key aspect of the public company disclosure cycle – annual reports, proxy statements, current reports, insider filings, and SEC comment letters – paired with hands-on drafting, analysis, and judgment exercises.