Juris Doctor (JD) Requirements

April 2008

The faculty adopted material changes to the graduation requirements over the past year.Please read this section carefully.

A. Credit Requirements

JD students must earn 84 law credits to graduate. JD/LLM students must earn 104 law credits to earn both degrees; all other joint degree students must earn 72 law credits, plus all non-law credits the joint program requires.

All students, including joint-degree students, must complete at least 64.5 credits in regularly-scheduled Law School classes. Regularly-scheduled Law School classes include:

Law School courses and seminars, including courses cross-listed at the Law School but originating in another school or department at the University;
Law School clinics;
in-class credits completed at another law school, including transfer credits and credits completed by students visiting away at another law school;
credits from approved study in a foreign exchange program.

Regularly-scheduled Law School classes do not include:

independent study work;
non-law classes (even those taken by joint-degree students);
research tutorials;
externships; and
ad hoc seminars.

If a JD student earns the minimum 84 law credits to graduate, the student may earn 19.5 credits of these credits in non-classroom hours. While all students must monitor compliance with this requirement, typically only a JD student who enrolled in a full-semester international externship would come close to the maximum number of permissible non-classroom credits.

Joint-degree students other than JD/LLM students must pay particular attention to the requirement of 64.5 in-class credits. Consistent with the degree requirements, most joint degree students will earn only 72 law credits in total for the JD degree, meaning these students may earn only 7.5 of the 72 credits through non-classroom hours as defined above. For example, if a JD/MA student plans to earn 72 total credits towards the JD degree and has completed three credits of independent study, the student may enroll in a four-credit externship, but not a five-credit externship. Of course, if the student earns more than 72 total credits, he or she may earn more than 7 credits in non-classroom work, as long as 64.5 credits have been earned through in-class coursework.

B. Upper-Level Academic Requirements

All students must satisfy the following three requirements after their first-year of study: (i) a two-credit ethics and professionalism requirement; (ii) a writing requirement; and, (iii) a professional skills requirement. These three requirements, as well as the credit requirement described above, are mandated by the American Bar Association. JD/LLM students are subject to an additional writing requirement discussed in more detail on page five.

Please note that double-counting of courses for these requirements is not permitted. Each of the three requirements must be satisfied by a separate and unique course.

1. Writing Requirement

The ABA requires all graduating students to complete at least one substantial written product after the first year of study. Students generally satisfy this requirement through completion of a two-credit (or greater) independent study research paper or a substantial (30 or more pages) research paper completed as part of a seminar course. Note that in 2008-09 we will begin offering three new upper-level writing courses taught by our first-year LARW instructors: in the fall, Jeremy Mullem's Writing for Publication (790) and Jo Ann Ragazzo's Legal Writing in Civil Practice (785); and, in the spring, Allison Kort’s Writing for Federal Complex Litigation. Each of these courses will be carry two credits and will require a written product that will satisfy the writing requirement completely.

Written products that do not require substantial independent research will not satisfy the writing requirement. A number of upper-level courses have writing components that consist primarily of journals, reactions papers or short statutory-interpretation papers and therefore would not satisfy the writing requirements.

Courses with writing components that ordinarily do not satisfy the writing requirement include (but are not limited to): Advanced Legal Writing (soon to be known as Legal Writing Workshop), A Practitioner’s Guide to Labor and Employment Law, Contract Drafting, Ethics and the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Ethics in Action, Introduction to Technology in the Law Office, Negotiation, Securities Regulation, and all of the Law School clinics.

Courses that require research papers of fewer than 30 pages will not by themselves satisfy the writing requirement. In such situations, students have two options: (i) ask the professor if the student may submit a 30-page paper; or, (ii) combine two shorter research papers from two different courses to satisfy the writing requirement. For example, if a seminar required a research paper of 20 pages, that paper could be combined with a independent study paper to satisfy the writing requirement.

2. Ethics & Professional Requirement

All students are required to complete at least two credits of ethics and professionalism ("E&P") courses before graduation. Of that, at least one credit must come from a course that focuses on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Three major changes regarding ethics: (i) Beginning with the Fall 2009 semester, you must either currently be taking or already have taken an ethics course focusing on the Model Rules to participate in a Domestic Externship. This requirement may be waived by the Domestic Externship Administrator. ii) Beginning with the Spring 2009 semester, you must have completed an ethics course focusing on the Model Rules to participate in a clinic. This means that if you plan to enroll in a clinic for the Spring 2009 semester, you MUST take an ethics course this fall. (iii) Pending faculty approval, you will be able to completely satisfy the E&P requirement by completing the one-credit Ethics & the Model Rules (246) course and then participating in a clinic.

Several year-long, credit/no credit Readings in Ethics (611) seminars will be added to the schedule later this spring or in early summer. As in past years, we will offer several different Readings in Ethics sections, all of which can be combined w/ Ethics & the Model Rules (246) to satisfy completely the E&P requirement. Rising 3Ls will receive enrollment priority in Readings in Ethics sections when they become available.

Courses in italics will be offered in the Fall 2008 semester.

Courses that Completely Satisfy the E&P Requirement

Courses that Satisfy the E&P Requirement in Conjunction with Ethics & the Rules of Professional Conduct (246)

*tentative: pending faculty approval
**non-law course offered by the Kenan Institute for Ethics

3. Professional Skills Requirement

The ABA requires all students to receive substantial instruction in “professional skills generally regarded as necessary for effective and responsible participation in the legal profession.” Students may satisfy this requirement by completing an externship or capstone project with a substantial skills component or by taking at least one of the following courses:

*may satisfy EITHER the Writing Requirement OR the Professional Skills Requirement, but NOT both requirements

**may satisfy EITHER the Ethics & Professionalism Requirement OR the Professional Skills Requirement, but NOT both requirements