Course Catalog

Founded in 2009, the Michigan Innocence Clinic was the first innocence clinic in the country to focus exclusively on non-DNA cases. In the MIC’s sixteen-year history, it has achieved victories in 45 cases on behalf of clients who had been wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit.
Students registered in the MIC investigate and litigate cases on behalf of incarcerated people who are actually innocent of the crimes for which they have been convicted. Students work on all aspects of the cases, including researching claims of innocence and the law pertaining to them, investigating new evidence, writing and editing court briefs and motions, and participating in courtroom activities when there are hearings scheduled in their cases.
The clinic also features a seminar component, where students explore in class the legal and policy issues underlying wrongful convictions and engage in practical skills exercises such as mock direct/cross exams and oral arguments. There are no exams or papers; students are graded on their preparedness and contribution to class, various in-class exercises, the progress they make in their cases, and the quality of their case-related work product. Students are required to complete six office hours per week in the clinic’s office, in addition to class time and the usual outside-of-class time spent doing seminar readings and case-related tasks.
The MIC’s docket spans both state and federal courts and is quite diverse and novel. No two cases are the same, and non-DNA innocence litigation continues to be a fascinating challenge within the field of criminal litigation. Students work with supervising attorneys to craft legal strategies and explore evidentiary and procedural avenues for obtaining relief, many of which have been expanded in recent years due to the work of the MIC and other such organizations.
Students interested in criminal law/procedure, appellate practice, brief writing, public interest work, innocence litigation, or courtroom advocacy would be especially suitable for the MIC. That said, there is also plenty in the clinic that would interest those who don’t plan to pursue a litigation career. There are no specific prerequisites (outside of the regular first-year courses), and no prior specialized knowledge of criminal defense or innocence litigation is required or expected.
* Clinic spans fall and winter semesters of one academic year. Students may register during winter of 1L or 2L year for enrollment during 2L or 3L year, respectively.

• Type: Clinic

Founded in 2009, the Michigan Innocence Clinic was the first innocence clinic in the country to focus exclusively on non-DNA cases. In the MIC’s sixteen-year history, it has achieved victories in 45 cases on behalf of clients who had been wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit.
Students registered in the MIC investigate and litigate cases on behalf of incarcerated people who are actually innocent of the crimes for which they have been convicted. Students work on all aspects of the cases, including researching claims of innocence and the law pertaining to them, investigating new evidence, writing and editing court briefs and motions, and participating in courtroom activities when there are hearings scheduled in their cases.
The clinic also features a seminar component, where students explore in class the legal and policy issues underlying wrongful convictions and engage in practical skills exercises such as mock direct/cross exams and oral arguments. There are no exams or papers; students are graded on their preparedness and contribution to class, various in-class exercises, the progress they make in their cases, and the quality of their case-related work product. Students are required to complete six office hours per week in the clinic’s office, in addition to class time and the usual outside-of-class time spent doing seminar readings and case-related tasks.
The MIC’s docket spans both state and federal courts and is quite diverse and novel. No two cases are the same, and non-DNA innocence litigation continues to be a fascinating challenge within the field of criminal litigation. Students work with supervising attorneys to craft legal strategies and explore evidentiary and procedural avenues for obtaining relief, many of which have been expanded in recent years due to the work of the MIC and other such organizations.
Students interested in criminal law/procedure, appellate practice, brief writing, public interest work, innocence litigation, or courtroom advocacy would be especially suitable for the MIC. That said, there is also plenty in the clinic that would interest those who don’t plan to pursue a litigation career. There are no specific prerequisites (outside of the regular first-year courses), and no prior specialized knowledge of criminal defense or innocence litigation is required or expected.
* Clinic spans fall and winter semesters of one academic year. Students may register during winter of 1L or 2L year for enrollment during 2L or 3L year, respectively.

• Type: Clinic

Course description depends on the mini-seminar topic. https://michigan.law.umich.edu/resource-center/mini-seminars

• Type: Mini-Seminar

You have just looked at a monthly bill recently sent to a client for a matter you have been working on nearly full time. You note that the supervising partner has taken credit for your work product and billed it at her hourly rates. Your time has been almost completely written off and, with that, any hope for a bonus. What do you do? This course explores real life dilemmas confronted by newer attorneys in their day to day practices within private law firms. It also touches upon prosecutorial ethics. It examines the interplay among the model rules, professionalism and business reality when being ethically correct does not necessarily equate with being professional. The course is interactive and requires active participation by each student. Readings will include Legal Ethics: Law Stories and articles and hypotheticals posted on C-tools. Leaders within the profession will appear as guest lecturers. The course will not examine all of the model rules and is not meant to be a primer for the multi-state professional responsibility examination.

• Type: Upper Class

Course description is coming…

• Type: N/A

National Security and Civil Liberties
This course will examine the balance between protecting national security and safeguarding constitutional values. We will explore government tools designed to prevent and disrupt terrorist attacks and to detect espionage. We will also study the impact these tools have on privacy, free speech, free assembly, open courts, and transparency in government. Topics will include electronic surveillance conducted by NSA and FBI pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”); investigative techniques authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act; use of informants and sting operations; the Classified Information Procedures Act (“CIPA”); the role and impact of leaks, such as those by Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks; detention of enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and military tribunals; free speech implications of prohibiting material support to designated terrorist organizations; the use of immigration law to protect national security; exploitation of social media; free speech and assembly rights of domestic extremist groups; and related topics.

• Type: Upper Class

Law 990 - This course offers students the opportunity to integrate practical experience in a legal setting outside the Law School with a Law School classroom experience. Each student will spend at least EIGHT (Section 1), TWELVE (Section 2), SIXTEEN (Section 3) or TWENTY (Section 4) hours per week working under the supervision of an attorney at a local non-profit, government agency, or court. Students may not receive any compensation for their work. Students will arrange their own placements, though interested students who need guidance about how to pursue a placement are welcome to make an appointment with the course professor, Amy Sankaran ([email protected]). Past placements have included the ACLU of Michigan, Family Law Project, Neighborhood Defender Service of Detroit, Magistrate, District, and Court of Appeals Judges, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office and Office of the Public Defender, and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, to name a few.

Part-Time Externship students will be co-enrolled in the Part-Time Externship Seminar (Law 991, 1 credit). Thus a student participating in the Part-Time Externship, Section 1 will receive 3 credits total, a student participating in the Part-Time Externship, Section 2 will receive 4 credits total, a student participating in the Part-Time Externship, Section 3 will receive 5 credits total, and a student participating in the Part-Time Externship, Section 4 will receive 6 credits total.

• Type: Externship

This contemporaneous, one-credit seminar is held every semester as a required companion to the Part-Time Externship (Law 990). For more information, please visit the course description for Law 990.

• Type: Externship

This course will provide an introduction to basic concepts of patent law, focusing on legal issues that arise in the course of obtaining and enforcing patents. The course is designed to be suitable for students planning to enter a general practice as well as those planning to specialize in intellectual property. A technical background is not a prerequisite, but students will be required to read and discuss cases involving technical facts.

• Type: Upper Class

One of the first medical-legal partnerships to be based in a law school setting, Pediatric Advocacy Clinic (PAC) students become part of an interdisciplinary team working to improve child health by providing legal assistance to low-income families on issues related to child health. Casework includes advocacy around special education, school discipline, domestic violence and family law, Medicaid and other public benefits, and housing conditions. PAC students take “first chair” responsibility for their cases and are involved in all aspects of a case. They learn a range of advocacy skills, from preventive legal advocacy (focusing on identifying issues at an early stage and on developing creative, multidisciplinary approaches to addressing them) to traditional litigation skills in both administrative and trial court settings. The PAC is 7 credits (4 for the seminar and 3 for the clinic) and all credits are graded. The PAC meets the New York Pro Bono requirement.
The Clinic seminar fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

• Type: Clinic

One of the first medical-legal partnerships to be based in a law school setting, Pediatric Advocacy Clinic (PAC) students become part of an interdisciplinary team working to improve child health by providing legal assistance to low-income families on issues related to child health. Casework includes advocacy around special education, school discipline, domestic violence and family law, Medicaid and other public benefits, and housing conditions. PAC students take “first chair” responsibility for their cases and are involved in all aspects of a case. They learn a range of advocacy skills, from preventive legal advocacy (focusing on identifying issues at an early stage and on developing creative, multidisciplinary approaches to addressing them) to traditional litigation skills in both administrative and trial court settings. Students in the seminar learn substantive law and core lawyering skills and engage in reflection and simulations designed to solidify these skills. The PAC is 7 credits (4 for the seminar and 3 for the clinic) and all credits are graded. The PAC meets the New York Pro Bono requirement.
The Clinic seminar fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

• Type: Clinic

This course covers philosophical issues raised by particular areas of law and matters of statecraft (as opposed to questions about the nature of law in general, which are addressed in Jurisprudence). The course also introduces students to relevant aspects of moral and political philosophy. The legal topics vary by semester. In recent years, they have included: the justification of criminal punishment; the role that luck plays in legal outcomes; the nature of reasonable doubt; the legal import of statistical evidence; torture; abortion; racial profiling.

• Type: Upper Class

From our nation’s founding on, we have debated (and, at times, litigated) the appropriate balance of power among the executive (the President), legislative (Congress), and judicial (the courts) branches of government. Emerging issues in the 21st century have amplified those debates. Many of these debates appear to be attributable to Congress retreating from its historical policymaking role. In that legislative vacuum, recent Presidents, seemingly more often than in the past, have exerted policymaking initiatives through executive orders, agency action, and their discretion to enforce federal laws. And many of those presidential acts have been challenged in federal court, leaving the courts to resolve thorny legal issues with profound policy implications. The seminar will focus on the evolution of presidential power, with a focus on the 21st century. The course has three aims. The first is to familiarize students with historical aspects of presidential power. The second is to emphasize legal developments involving the President over the last 25 years. The third aim is more practical. Students will come away with a practical understanding of how the President receives legal advice, and how the Department of Justice represents the President (as well as other actors in the executive branch) in court.

• Type: Seminar

This practice/simulation course covers the legal and legal practice issues of the private equity business. It covers legal issues related to the formation and operation of private equity funds and their investments. It will focus on the process of the fund investing in typical private equity investments and on identifying and understanding the legal, contractual and other issues that arise in structuring, negotiating and documenting private equity transactions.

• Type: Practice Simulation

Pro Bono and BigLaw: Public Interest Work in Private Practice
This seminar will expose students to the real-world considerations related to large law firm pro bono practice in order to help them do pro bono work while being successful associates in their billable practice. The first session will introduce students to law firm economics and explore how the top law firms can run large pro bono programs and how this affects the firm’s bottom line. Students will learn about law firm pro bono policies, explore motivations to do pro bono, and learn how to navigate obstacles to pro bono. Finally, we will explore pro bono in practice, including balancing billable matters with pro bono matters, working with legal service organizations, and partnering with clients on pro bono. Students will be provided with reading materials, and leaders within the legal profession will appear as guest lecturers. Grades will primarily be based upon an assignment to interview law firm and public interest leaders and synthesize those conversations.

• Type: Seminar

Progressive Prosecution: Law and Policy
Although prosecuting attorneys have typically taken a “tough-on-crime” approach, a growing number of elected prosecutors from across the country are taking a “progressive” approach. These “progressive prosecutors” see their role as combatting overincarceration, eliminating racial and socioeconomic inequity, and changing a criminal legal system that too frequently exacerbates those inequities.
This course, co-taught by Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney Eli Savit and Chief Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Victoria Burton-Harris, will explore the theoretical underpinnings behind the “progressive prosecutor” movement; its promises and limitations; and the progress the movement has made over the past several years. During the latter part of the course, students will work on real-world research and writing projects that will be used by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office to move forward its progressive vision.

• Type: Practice Simulation

This foundational course surveys the law of property, which defines the interests, rights, and duties with respect to spaces and things that the law recognizes and protects. The course covers how property interests may be obtained, held, used, and transferred, as found in the law of possessory estates and future interests in land, concurrent estates, easements, covenants, personal property, bailments, intellectual property, conveyancing, adverse possession, nuisance, zoning and land-use, takings, and housing law. The concepts of property, possession, and ownership—and the consequences flowing from these concepts—will be constantly examined. The overall focus will be on how property law fundamentally structures the rights and duties between individuals in their interactions with the world, shaping our physical, social, and economic spaces.

• Type: Upper Class

This seminar will explore the conceptual and practical ties between ownership and stewardship. Blackstone famously described ownership as “that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world.” But many intellectual traditions regard the human relationship with the natural world as one of interdependence and community, not dominion. The course will start with some classic readings in environmental ethics, focusing especially on those that emphasize the obligations of humans within an ecological community. We will then examine the law of property, particularly the common law of real property though statutory law and personal property will also be considered. Across a range of concrete legal contexts, property rights operate to shield owners from obligations to the rest of the world. But there are also ways that the law of property functions to assign responsibilities to owners and to manage resources. This seminar will examine the tensions and also the harmonies between legal ownership and responsibilities toward the natural world. Students will write a seminar paper on a particular doctrinal issue, including potential legal reforms.

• Type: Seminar

Psychologically Informed Lawyering will examine psychological issues that affect lawyers and the clients we serve in critically important and potentially determinative ways. Topics will include trauma (including historical, direct, and vicarious), mental health issues, substance abuse, public and private mental health services, challenges to well-being in the legal profession, and developing professional skills informed by these and other considerations. This class seeks to foster dialogue across practice areas, develop students’ understanding of and compassion for clients with psychological challenges, and enhance students ability to apply psychological knowledge to client representation. We will consider psychological factors at the individual, family, and societal/structural levels to develop a base of knowledge and skills more broadly applicable than in a single case or area of law.

• Type: Seminar

Public Interest Litigation Ethics
Most legal ethics courses tend to fall naturally on the “corporate” or “big firm” side of things. In this seminar we will focus on the ethical issues that arise in public interest practice — Legal Aid, the ACLU, private offices handling civil rights cases, criminal defense attorneys, government lawyers (including prosecutors), and agencies like the National Wildlife Federation. We will cover a range of ethical issues, but from the perspective of lawyers who are trying to do well while doing good. We will include simulations, like mock grievance hearings in which students will have to defend the ethical positions they have taken. Students will get useful practical knowledge of the ethics rules, and a keener sense of how to stay out of trouble in a public interest practice.

• Type: Upper Class

Public-Sector Structural Reform in K-12 Education Externship

The United States is in the midst of a massive restructuring of public-sector service delivery and regulation, particularly as they relate to the governance and management of its public schools. Staffed by broadly interdisciplinary teams of accomplished professionals, the most successful of the new federal, state, and local education organizations are replacing decades-old public bureaucracies and interest group politics with “learning organizations” committed to using public problem solving techniques to accelerate adult and institutional, as well student learning.

This Public Education Policy Seminar and Practicum originates at Columbia Law School, and attracts upper-level graduate students in law, business, education, and policy from Harvard, Michigan, NYU, Penn, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Yale, and other universities for a full semester of intensive engagement with each other around transformational change in public education. Second and third-year law students may take the course either in the fall semester or the spring semester. 13 units of credit are awarded with the grades transferring to Michigan Law School.

Participants in the program take part in a rigorous and rewarding learning experience, including:

(i) An engaging interdisciplinary seminar in the design, regulation, governance, democratic accountability, and transformation of K-12 school systems and allied public- and social-sector organizations; [4 credits]

(ii) Comprehensive skills training in team-based problem solving, managing multidimensional (legal, operational, etc.) projects to specified outcomes in complex environments, client counseling, and effective communication [2 credits]; and

(iii) A high-priority project designing and implementing legal and policy solutions to a complex problem at the core of a client public- or social-sector organization’s mission to improve the educational outcomes and life chances of children. [7 credits].

The Program Offers:

* Intensive experiential learning on interdisciplinary teams and cutting-edge projects

* Deep engagement in public education improvement strategies and debates

* Panels and field trips interacting with prominent education leaders

* 1:1 mentoring, K-12 education career support, and networking opportunities

* Merit scholarships for exceptional students

* Challenging, fun, and meaningful work helping to improve kids’ learning and lives

Admission to the course is by application. A limited number of $25,000 scholarships are available for exceptional students to apply to their law school tuition in return for a commitment to spending time after graduation and judicial clerkships in a public or nonprofit job in the education sector.

For more information, including a course FAQ, names of Michigan Law students who have taken the previous version of the course, or lists of past projects in which students have engaged in the Course, please email [email protected] or Professor Amy Sankaran at [email protected].

*This description was adapted from Columbia Law School’s own course description, which can be found on Columbia Law School’s web site: http://www.law.columbia.edu/ (search on L8016).

• Type: Externship

Public-Sector Structural Reform in K-12 Education Practicum

The United States is in the midst of a massive restructuring of public-sector service delivery and regulation, particularly as they relate to the governance and management of its public schools. Staffed by broadly interdisciplinary teams of accomplished professionals, the most successful of the new federal, state, and local education organizations are replacing decades-old public bureaucracies and interest group politics with “learning organizations” committed to using public problem solving techniques to accelerate adult and institutional, as well student learning.

This Public Education Policy Seminar and Practicum originates at Columbia Law School, and attracts upper-level graduate students in law, business, education, and policy from Harvard, Michigan, NYU, Penn, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Yale, and other universities for a full semester of intensive engagement with each other around transformational change in public education. Second and third-year law students may take the course either in the fall semester or the spring semester. 13 units of credit are awarded with the grades transferring to Michigan Law School.

Participants in the program take part in a rigorous and rewarding learning experience, including:

(i) An engaging interdisciplinary seminar in the design, regulation, governance, democratic accountability, and transformation of K-12 school systems and allied public- and social-sector organizations; [4 credits]

(ii) Comprehensive skills training in team-based problem solving, managing multidimensional (legal, operational, etc.) projects to specified outcomes in complex environments, client counseling, and effective communication [2 credits]; and

(iii) A high-priority project designing and implementing legal and policy solutions to a complex problem at the core of a client public- or social-sector organization’s mission to improve the educational outcomes and life chances of children. [7 credits].

The Program Offers:

* Intensive experiential learning on interdisciplinary teams and cutting-edge projects

* Deep engagement in public education improvement strategies and debates

* Panels and field trips interacting with prominent education leaders

* 1:1 mentoring, K-12 education career support, and networking opportunities

* Merit scholarships for exceptional students

* Challenging, fun, and meaningful work helping to improve kids’ learning and lives

Admission to the course is by application. A limited number of $25,000 scholarships are available for exceptional students to apply to their law school tuition in return for a commitment to spending time after graduation and judicial clerkships in a public or nonprofit job in the education sector.

For more information, including a course FAQ, names of Michigan Law students who have taken the previous version of the course, or lists of past projects in which students have engaged in the Course, please email [email protected] or Professor Amy Sankaran at [email protected].

*This description was adapted from Columbia Law School’s own course description, which can be found on Columbia Law School’s web site: http://www.law.columbia.edu/ (search on L8016).

• Type: Externship

Public-Sector Structural Reform in K-12 Education Seminar

The United States is in the midst of a massive restructuring of public-sector service delivery and regulation, particularly as they relate to the governance and management of its public schools. Staffed by broadly interdisciplinary teams of accomplished professionals, the most successful of the new federal, state, and local education organizations are replacing decades-old public bureaucracies and interest group politics with “learning organizations” committed to using public problem solving techniques to accelerate adult and institutional, as well student learning.

This Public Education Policy Seminar and Practicum originates at Columbia Law School, and attracts upper-level graduate students in law, business, education, and policy from Harvard, Michigan, NYU, Penn, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Yale, and other universities for a full semester of intensive engagement with each other around transformational change in public education. Second and third-year law students may take the course either in the fall semester or the spring semester. 13 units of credit are awarded with the grades transferring to Michigan Law School.

Participants in the program take part in a rigorous and rewarding learning experience, including:

(i) An engaging interdisciplinary seminar in the design, regulation, governance, democratic accountability, and transformation of K-12 school systems and allied public- and social-sector organizations; [4 credits]

(ii) Comprehensive skills training in team-based problem solving, managing multidimensional (legal, operational, etc.) projects to specified outcomes in complex environments, client counseling, and effective communication [2 credits]; and

(iii) A high-priority project designing and implementing legal and policy solutions to a complex problem at the core of a client public- or social-sector organization’s mission to improve the educational outcomes and life chances of children. [7 credits].

The Program Offers:

* Intensive experiential learning on interdisciplinary teams and cutting-edge projects

* Deep engagement in public education improvement strategies and debates

* Panels and field trips interacting with prominent education leaders

* 1:1 mentoring, K-12 education career support, and networking opportunities

* Merit scholarships for exceptional students

* Challenging, fun, and meaningful work helping to improve kids’ learning and lives

Admission to the course is by application. A limited number of $25,000 scholarships are available for exceptional students to apply to their law school tuition in return for a commitment to spending time after graduation and judicial clerkships in a public or nonprofit job in the education sector.

For more information, including a course FAQ, names of Michigan Law students who have taken the previous version of the course, or lists of past projects in which students have engaged in the Course, please email [email protected] or Professor Amy Sankaran at [email protected].

*This description was adapted from Columbia Law School’s own course description, which can be found on Columbia Law School’s web site: http://www.law.columbia.edu/ (search on L8016).

• Type: Externship

The civil rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education, and the passage of the great civil rights statutes of the 1960s were milestones in American history. Those events, along with the election (and re-election) of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president, suggested that the eradication of racial subordination in America was achievable, if not imminent. To date, that hasn’t happened. Throughout our history we have attempted to overcome race, only to be disappointed by the illusion that race had been overcome. The law has not been a neutral force in this dynamic. It has created and maintained a regime of white supremacy in the United States. At the same time, the law has also provided the tools essential to resist that regime. This course explicates this paradox. It is designed to reveal the pervasiveness, complexity, richness, and significance of racial controversies as they relate to the law. To that end, the class will examine the intersection of race and the law across a range of settings, subject matters and time periods including slavery, Reconstruction, K-12 and higher education, affirmative action, the First Amendment, and voting and political participation. The materials consist of a mix of cases, videos and scholarly commentary.

• Type: Upper Class