Course Offerings

This course studies how to write and prosecute a United States patent application. With numerous drafting exercises, including the drafting of claims and arguments in response to Office Actions from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the course both introduces students to common issues arising during patent prosecution and equips students with basic strategies to deal with those issues.  The course also explores patent infringement analysis and opinion letter work in which patent lawyers routinely engage.  This course does not include the formal preparation for the USPTO patent bar.

Payment Systems will be a general overview of the mechanisms for making payments. Building off an initial focus on negotiable instruments (e.g., checks), the course will dive into other payment systems, including credit cards, debit cards, ACH payments, wire transfers, and emerging issues with the regulation of mobile payments and digital assets. We’ll address uniform state laws (e.g., UCC Articles 3, 4, and 4A), applicable federal statutes and regulations (e.g., he Truth-in-Lending Act, and the Electronic Fund Transfers Act), as well as proprietary network rules and regulations.   In looking at these different frameworks, we’ll consider how risk is allocated among the different participants, countermands, and defenses on the underlying contracts between participants. Beyond the specifics of payments, the course is designed to give students a perspective on practicing as a regulatory lawyer (especially as an in-house regulatory lawyer), with a focus on statutory analysis and how to effectively translate that analysis into practical commercial counseling.

This class will provide an overview of what it is like to practice on the Plaintiff’s side of civil litigation. Hollywood and most legal television shows would have you believe that being a Plaintiff’s lawyer is as easy as putting up a billboard and filing a lawsuit. This course will focus on the reality of Plaintiff’s practice by discussing ethical concerns, advertising, federal and state laws privacy laws regarding client medical records, drafting and submitting time-limited demands, and of course, dealing with the insurance company.

The law has always had to adapt to deal with challenges created by new technologies. The first copyright law, for instance, can trace its origin to the proliferation of publishing enabled by the printing press. Today this issue is especially important because technology develops much more quickly than the law can respond. And since things like the World Wide Web, social media, smart phones, and wearables are so integral to modern life, this time between tech development and legal change can be lead to problems that the law cannot easily address. As such, this course will explore the intersection of law, policy, and the modern connective technologies that many of use daily. To this end, we will look at copyright, fair use, and the changing concept of IP ownership, particularly since the growth and fall of Napster; privacy and data security, particularly since Edward Snowden's revelations; and how copyright and privacy collide with free speech, particularly considering cases like the fight between Terry "Hulk Hogan" Bollea and Gawker Media.

This is a practicum in which students will learn to identify, investigate, and prosecute animal welfare crimes and ordinance violations. In some semesters, it may include drafting ordinances and state laws, providing an analysis of laws presented for adoption by others, and other related tasks. In academic years in which Boot Camp in Animal Welfare Skills is taught, it must be taken in advance of this practicum or concurrently. Register for both 5278S (graded portion) and 5279S (pass/fail portion).

The strategies of complex civil litigation, focusing on case development and analysis in the pre-trial period.

This course addresses the recognition, development, and regulation of rights in real property and personal property, including the nature and function of possession and title, shared ownership, private and public rights, and transfers of property.

This course teaches how the 4th and 5th Amendments guide and limit law enforcement officers when they search or seize citizens and when they conduct pre-arrest interviews or post-arrest (custodial) interrogations. Students will also learn practical skills including how to conduct a motion to suppress hearing and a Jackson-Denno hearing.

Fall Semester. This course teaches the procedural steps involved in the prosecution of a criminal case following a suspect's arrest. Students will learn how to evaluate cases and how to wisely exercise "prosecutorial discretion." Students will also learn practical skills including how to conduct preliminary hearings, grand jury proceedings, and arraignments.

Spring Semester. This course teaches the procedural steps involved in the prosecution of a criminal case following a defendant's not-guilty plea. Students will learn about jury trials and jury selection. Students will also learn about the search warrant requirement and its "well-recognized exceptions," identification of suspects, Confrontation Clause, and Right to Counsel.

This course offers an overview of Public Health Law. The course begins by defining public health law with historic, contemporary and international comparative law-policy perspectives, discusses the government entities most involved in public health domestically and internationally, and then surveys a range of applications. Coverage encompasses reproductive health, vaccination, biodefense, integration of genomics (study of gene function) and population genetics into public health policy and practice, and international public health.

Designed to teach students to discover what peoples' needs are, to be able as lawyers to summon community's resources for meeting those needs, and to determine what lawyers can do to insure the community's services are in place and functioning. Students will be required to work with both service institutions and individuals who are the clients of those institutions. They will be assigned to cases and graded on their success in solving the problems raised.

This introductory course will examine the doctrine, theory, and evolution of International Law. Once focused narrowly on relations between nation-states, the field now encompasses myriad legal norms and mechanisms regulating the global activities not only of states, but also of human beings, corporations, and intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations.

Race and Law is a 2 or 3 hour course that meets twice a week. It focuses on historical and current issues that illustrate the critical and systemic ways in which law has been used to define race, to construct racial identity and to justify racial discrimination in the United States, as well as the attempts to utilize law to deconstruct those same structures. Topics include, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement, policing, mass incarceration, voting rights and processes, educational opportunity, affirmative action, language and accent discrimination, and generally the intersection of race and law with gender, sex, ethnicity, religion and other routes along which discrimination often travels in combination with race.

An examination of the effects of race on the structure and practice of law, on thinking about law, and on legal education.

A comprehensive overview of issues involved in developing real estate projects and representing real estate developers, from finding and securing a site, structuring the acquisition agreement, understanding development financial metrics, professional service agreements, financing agreements and construction contracts through sale or refinancing of the project.

Residential and commercial real estate transactions, including contracts of sale, brokerage arrangements, deeds of conveyance, the recording system, and methods of title assurance; financing of real estate acquisition, including installment land contracts, mortgages, and other financing methods.

The world's refugees - persons forced to flee home countries - topped 15 million in 2014. This course will examine laws and policies governing forced migration. To be studied: international and U.S. legal systems and institutions; substantive, procedural, and evidentiary aspects of an asylum claim; causes; and trafficking and other refugee experiences.

Digital abuse is on the rise. People are increasingly using networked technologies to engage in harassment, stalking, privacy invasions, and surveillance. The law will often adapt to deal with harmful technologies, and one of the pressing challenges of our time is deciding whether and how to regulate digital abuse. This seminar will consider responses to the harms enabled by networked technologies, exploring issues related to civil rights, consumer protection, cybercrime, free speech, privacy, and private self-governance.

Remedies is a transubstantive course that crosses the traditional boundaries within private law, and between private and public law. The course requires students to reconsider from a new perspective the fundamental tort, property and contract law doctrines they learned in their first-year. In particular, they are asked to focus on the relief they are seeking for their clients and the alternative forms of relief that might be available. After all, remedies are the denominator common to every area of the law that imposes liability. The objective of this course is gain an understanding of the relationship between liability and remedy across many areas of the law, looking at both regularities and divergences.

This course will introduce students to the legal and policy issues currently arising in the ongoing transition to renewable energy resources in the U.S. electric power sector. Following an introduction to utility regulatory basics, the course will focus on conflicts and challenges in development of solar and wind energy resources, and discuss legal issues related to grid modernization initiatives (e.g., energy storage, demand side management, smart meters), and other renewable energy resources (e.g., biomass, renewable fuels, geothermal). The course is designed to be accessible to students regardless of background familiarity with the subject matter.

This course reviews the legal requirements concerning the structuring, formation, and regulation of pooled investment vehicles, particularly under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.  Attention also will be given to hedge funds, venture capital funds, private equity funds, and real estate partnerships.

The course will be designed to equip students with a starter of skills and perspective to create immediate capacity to function effectively in state governmental lawyer capacity.

This course will explore the history and law of reproductive rights in the United States. The majority of the term will be spent analyzing the constitutional framework governing forced sterilization, contraception and abortion and the substantial changes made to that framework by the current Supreme Court.  We will consider the historical, ethical, social and religious context; gender, race and socioeconomic class issues; impact on health and the U.S. health care system; the rationales for the protection of reproductive rights; and the practical impact of the regulations. We will also look ahead to the future of reproductive rights jurisprudence in the U.S. in the post-Dobbs era and discuss broader, intersectional areas of reproductive justice, including issues of access, parenting, maternal health and criminalization of pregnancy.  This course is pass/fail.

This commercial law course focuses on one of the most important devices in facilitating credit: secured financing when the collateral consists of personal property. The term “personal property” for the purpose of the course includes tangible and intangible items such as motor vehicles, goods in store inventories, rights in copyrights, trademarks and patents, agricultural products and commodities, contract rights, payment intangibles, accounts receivable, and equipment. Focus is on Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. The course should help students to develop their skills in statutory analysis and in understanding and planning business transactions.