Course Catalog

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 (aharwell@umich.edu). 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

Conflict involving youth, family, communities and institutions inexorably finds its way into state court justice systems. Once there, litigants find that institutional pathways available to them not only effect legal consequences to their actions, but more importantly, have longstanding affects on their lives, as well as the lives of others. This class introduces students to the emergence of one such path in state court justice systems: peacemaking.
The introduction begins with the exploration of the roots of peacemaking from indigenous nations within our national border. Students will learn from nationally renowned native guest lecturers about world views, tribal justice systems, tensions between native justice systems and western-model court systems and the opportunity for nurturing communication, collaboration and finding common ground between the two.
Thereafter, students will engage in exploring the practical application of peacemaking in state justice systems in family, probate, civil and criminal proceedings. As part of that engagement, students will first conduct a mock trial in a subject area of their choosing through a traditional adversarial model, and then through a peacemaking approach.
Finally, students will explore emerging branches from peacemaking in state justice systems. This exploration will include current models around the country, as well as inspiration from models outside of our borders such as South Africa, Canada and Ireland.
The class is co taught by a trial attorney with criminal and family court experience, and a state court presiding judge of a peacemaking court. In addition to the mock trial, a final paper will serve in lieu of a final exam.

• Type: Practice Simulation

The Pediatric Advocacy Clinic (PAC) is one of the first medical-legal partnerships to be based in a law school setting. Through this partnership, students are able to reach families most in need of legal assistance and become part of an interdisciplinary team working to improve child health. Casework includes domestic violence and family law, special education, Medicaid appeals, and low-income housing conditions. Students in the clinic 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.
For more information, please contact Debra Chopp (dchopp@umich.edu).

• Type: Clinic

The Pediatric Advocacy Clinic (PAC) is one of the first medical-legal partnerships to be based in a law school setting. Through this partnership, students are able to reach families most in need of legal assistance and become part of an interdisciplinary team working to improve child health. Casework includes domestic violence and family law, special education, Medicaid appeals, and low-income housing conditions. Students in the clinic 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.
For more information, please contact Debra Chopp (dchopp@umich.edu).

• Type: Clinic

This course, structured as a seminar, will explore foundational questions concerning prices and pricing from a legal perspective. Questions we may consider include: What does it mean for prices to be fair? Why have prices at all? How does price-setting occur (in theory and practice)? What are appropriate social goals relating to prices? How should we understand and respond to generalized price inflation or deflation? What is, and should be, law's role in all this? Legal regimes that already implicate questions of prices and pricing will be considered, including labor regulation and competition law, as well as examples of sector-specific price regulation or publicly coordinated prices. In addition to legal sources, our readings and discussion may also draw from, among others: economics and the history of economic thought, philosophy, accounting, and current events and debates in economic policy.

• Type: Seminar

Problems in Constitutional Theory
This seminar will explore the nature of constitutionality in the American legal system. What is the difference between a constitutional proposition and a non-constitutional proposition? On a certain lay understanding, a constitutional proposition would be (1) grounded in the written Constitution, (2) fundamental to the legal system, (3) entrenched against change except through Article V amendment, and (4) enforceable by the courts. But in fact, many constitutional propositions lack one or more of these characteristics, and none of these characteristics describes all propositions that properly socialized American lawyers call "constitutional." This seminar will investigate this puzzle, aiming to discern the scope and content of what we might call the "operative constitution." Key issues include the role of the written Constitution, the nature of entrenchment, and the possibility of implications for constitutional decisionmaking.
Each student in the seminar will be required to write two short papers and one longer paper. The short papers, which shall not exceed five pages, will address the reading in particular weeks and will be circulated to all members of the seminar in advance of the relevant week's discussion. The longer paper, which shall not exceed 20 pages, will be due at the end of the semester. The longer paper must be original work, meaning that it must either contain an original argument or else support a known argument in a new way.

• Type: Seminar

Professor Gallanis's section: This course provides an introduction to the legal relationships that arise out of or constitute ownership of property. Subjects covered may include, but are not limited to, the acquisition of rights in personal and real property, the nature of ownership of natural resources, the types of and rules governing concurrent and successive interests in property, the use of and limits on restraints on alienation, the law governing private restrictions on the use of land, the law of conveyancing, and an introduction to the law of takings and of landlord and tenant. Grades will be based on participation and a final examination.
Professor Prifogle's section: This course offers a doctrinal survey of property law, covering topics such as possessory estates in land, concurrent estates, nuisance, easements, covenants, zoning and land-use, eminent domain, and housing law. The course also covers the historical origins and development of property law, its theoretical justifications, and the relationship between property law and resource distribution. In short, we'll study a range of doctrines and concepts that determine what people can own, how interests in property are allocated, and the default rights and obligations that come with ownership. We'll also consider the state's role--both its power and limitations--in determining these issues and how race and gender alter one's experience, and one's community's experience, with property law. After this course you should be able to articulate how the state defines, constructs, and protects property rights, and assess the relationship between doctrinal structures and the varied lived experiences of those structures more broadly.
Professor Cornell's section: 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 workshop will engage legal scholarship in the areas of administrative law, constitutional law, and public law generally, focusing this year on the intersection between history and public law. Sessions will typically feature a visiting scholar presenting a work-in-progress. For some class sessions, participants will read cases, scholarship, and other materials addressing the subject matter and discuss the materials in a standard seminar format. Students will be expected to write a 3-4 page reflection paper for each outside presentation (11 total) over the course of the semester and to participate actively in discussion each week. Sessions with speakers are open to the academic community at large.

• Type: Seminar

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, and all of the credits are graded, 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 cprl@law.columbia.edu or Professor Amy Sankaran at aharwell@umich.edu.

*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, and all of the credits are graded, 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 cprl@law.columbia.edu or Professor Amy Sankaran at aharwell@umich.edu.

*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, and all of the credits are graded, 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 cprl@law.columbia.edu or Professor Amy Sankaran at aharwell@umich.edu.

*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

This course examines the legal history of the interrelationship of race and the law in the United States across the 19th and 20th centuries. The course pays special attention to the active role that law has played historically in racially defining U.S. and state citizenship and the consequent rights and duties that flowed from the use of race as a measure of national as well as local belonging. The changing nature of the relationship of race to American law over time was an important determiner of inclusion and exclusion in the US and a site for the legal construction of socio-economic inequality as well as moments of more equitable aspiration. The course will attempt to incorporate both lecture material as well as the close discussion of secondary studies by leading legal-historical scholars as we survey major cases and controversies, from the legal and constitutional roots of slavery to the infamous Dred Scott decision; from American Indian dispossession to an overseas empire; from the role of judicial statutory interpretation in defining race to epic turn-of-the-century battles over immigration restriction to the civil rights revolution of the late 20th century and its consequences and limitations. A key feature of this class will be the use of locally as well as nationally-renowned speakers to aid in our collective exploration of the relationship of law and race over the course of American history.

• Type: Upper Class

Rules of Play: Sports and Games as Legal Systems --- This course operates from the premise that sports and other games are legal systems that present a rich array of legal problems, interesting in their own right and often also interesting because of their analogy to problems that arise in other contexts. Among the topics to be discussed are:
(1) How should competition be structured? For example, what metrics should be used to determine a winner? How (if at all) should ties be broken? What standards should be used for eligibility (for example, in the case of transgendered and "bionic" athletes)?
(2) How should the bounds of acceptable conduct be determined? For example, when should deception or stalling be punished, and when should they be treated as acceptable parts of the game? How should misconduct be punished?
(3) What are appropriate remedies for official errors?

• Type: Upper Class

This course covers the regulation of securities offerings and trading under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. It examines offerings and the registration process under the Securities Act, along with reporting requirements under the Exchange Act. The course will also cover fraud, insider trading and civil liabilities under both Acts.

• Type: Upper Class

In the Senior Judge Seminar students work closely with Legal Practice professors in connection with various aspects of the first-year Legal Practice course. Each Legal Practice professor interviews, chooses and supervises the Senior Judge Seminar students for the Legal Practice section taught by that professor.

• Type: Upper Class

The Senior Judge Seminar II is a graded course intended to allow selected students who have excelled in the Senior Judge I seminar to work in greater depth with a Legal Practice professor in connection with the Legal Practice course. Each Legal Practice professor interviews, chooses and supervises the Senior Judge Seminar II students for the Legal Practice section taught by the professor.

• Type: Upper Class

This seminar will examine sexual orientation and gender identity in the U.S. legal system. We will explore the ways in which different views of sexual orientation and gender identity have influenced the constitutional and statutory rights of gays, lesbians, and transgender people. Topics will include: anti-sodomy laws; associational rights (relating to both associations among LGBT persons and those who seek to exclude such persons from public and private spaces and activities); anti-gay ballot initiatives; military service; efforts to expand and limit family and parental rights, including second-parent adoption and marriage rights; equality rights in educational contexts; equal employment opportunity; and religious freedom restoration acts. Throughout, we'll consider the interactions among lawyers and legal advocacy; LGBT movements; legislative politics; and doctrinal development in state and federal courts, as well as in administrative agencies such as the EEOC and the federal Department of Education.

• Type: Seminar

The South Africa Externship offers students the chance to spend the Winter semester working for a non-profit, government agency, or court. Since 1996, Michigan Law has placed over 150 students in full-semester externships, including positions at the Human Rights Commission (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban), Legal Resources Centre (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Grahamstown), University of Cape Town, Refugee Law Clinic, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Johannesburg), Centre for Environmental Rights (Cape Town), Scalabrini (Cape Town) and Lawyers for Human Rights (Johannesburg) to name a few.

Before they arrive, in odd years, students take a course in Constitutionalism in South Africa, taught by Karthy Govender of Durban in person in Ann Arbor, MI, giving them a good grasp of the seminal South African cases so students can "hit the ground running" upon their arrival, as well as a companion seminar meant to enrich their experience (Law 939). In odd years, the students only take the companion seminar and spend longer at their placements in South Africa. Students apply in the Winter before the program begins the following January.

For more information, visit our website or contact lawexternships@umich.edu. We are happy to meet with students to answer questions, give guidance on potential placements, provide information on how to apply, etc. Further, every January we hold an informational meeting for all of our international externship programs, so please watch for that announcement.

• Type: Externship

South Africa Externship Seminar
This contemporaneous, one-credit seminar is held every Winter as a required companion to the South Africa Externship (Law 938). For more information, please visit the course description for Law 938.

• Type: Externship

This course will explore legal issues and disputes that arise involving sports leagues and professional and amateur athletes. We will spend time discussing leading sports law cases, as well as current legal disputes and issues in the sports world. Finally, we will examine some of the jobs and responsibilities lawyers have in the sports industry.

• Type: Upper Class

This course introduces students to the various legal and business considerations involved in the representation of startup companies and in structuring venture capital transactions. The first portion of the course focuses on the key issues involved in forming and operating an emerging growth business (a "startup"), including selecting and forming a business entity, structuring the economic benefits and management control among various owners, protecting intellectual property assets and complying with securities laws. With that foundation, the second portion of the course focuses on the significant legal and business issues involved in a venture capital financing transaction from both the company and the investor perspective (with a look at "crowdfunding"). The course combines theory and practice in order to prepare students for the types of projects and challenges they will confront as transactional lawyers.
A knowledge of corporate and business associations law, as well as securities law and finance, will be helpful to a student in this course. That being said, there are no formal prerequisites, and the course is structured for beginners as well as for students with more subject matter expertise.

• Type: Upper Class

The history of U.S. immigration law is replete with in-between statuses. From the Founding until today, large numbers of people have related to U.S. border as neither fully American nor fully foreign. Across 150 years, this category came to include millions of so-called Americans in waiting, immigrants who had declared their intent to become U.S. citizens but who had not yet done so. During the Civil War, people who escaped slavery into Union military lines could be labeled as contraband. The early twentieth century saw migrants from the United States territory of the Philippines categorized as non-citizen U.S. nationals subject to immigration quotas. Today, such in-between statuses include non-immigrant alienage, permanent residence, and parole, among many more categories. This seminar examines recent scholarship on such statuses to examine how their proliferation and operation have helped officials advance, defend, and obscure racial and colonial projects at odds with liberal-democratic U.S. ideals.

• Type: Seminar

This seminar is designed for students with an interest in academic writing. Before the term begins each student must have previously written a draft of an academic paper that they would like to revise substantially in the course of the workshop, either for publication or for presentation on the academic job market. The first four or five sessions of the term will be devoted to reading articles written by young scholars who subsequently got academic jobs and discussing their strengths and weaknesses. The balance of the term will be devoted to presenting and critiquing the works in progress of the workshop students as the papers undergo revision. Students will be responsible not only for presenting and revising their own papers, but for commenting upon each other's work. Each student paper will be presented twice over the course of the semester: first, by a student commentator, and second, following revision, by the student author. The workshop will meet once a week for a 2-hour session. Students interested in enrolling in the workshop should submit draft papers to Professor Eisenberg by email directed to rse@umich.edu.

• Type: Seminar

This practice simulation course will be taught by J. Phillip Adams., a retired partner of the New York office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP. The professor will submit to the seminar cutting-edge problems which he has faced in practice. The students will resolve those problems by structuring transactions to accomplish the client's business goals within the framework of non-tax legal requirements, without incurring unnecessary tax liabilities and in a manner that otherwise optimizes the client's tax posture. Typically, the students will be assigned to work in teams. With each problem, the students submit their solutions in writing, and one team will present its solution to the class orally. The professor will discuss and evaluate the teams' solutions in light of the one that was employed in practice. Prior to the students preparing and submitting their solutions, there will be lectures and discussion of the tax issues involved in each problem.
The goal of the practice simulation course is to immerse the students in the process of approaching problems from a transactional perspective. The students will be given a set of facts and objectives, and will be required to determine what steps should be taken to achieve those objectives. An additional goal is to provide the students with exposure to the manner in which experienced lawyers utilize their skills to solve complex problems. The principal issues on which the problems will focus are corporate tax issues, but other areas will likely be covered. For example, partnership tax issues and issues involving the taxation of financial instruments have played a significant role in certain case studies. In recent semesters, problems have involved, among other matters, complex tax-free corporate mergers, corporate divisions (spin-offs), acquisitions of controlling interests in non-U.S. corporations, and transactions designed to illustrate the difference between legitimate tax planning and abusive corporate tax shelters.

• Type: Practice Simulation

This seminar will examine many of the most important tax questions confronting policymakers. The likely topics will include, among others, whether income is the right tax base; the future of the corporate income tax and taxes on capital more broadly; whether tax should be the exclusive legal tool for redistributing income; and how the tax system should treat marriage. Seminar readings will focus on legal and empirical tax scholarship, including behavioral economics. Students will write a research paper on a topic of their choice (with the instructor's approval).

• Type: Seminar

This is the basic course in federal income taxation. It is a statutory course, and the principal source of law will be the Internal Revenue Code. The topics covered will include the definition of gross income and the determination of permissible deductions from gross income. The class will also analyze numerous Code provisions and doctrines that raise issues of tax timing (that is, in what year should a given item of income or a given deduction be taken into account) and income attribution (that is, to whom should a given item of income or a given deduction be attributed). The bulk of the course will be devoted to learning basic statutory analysis. In addition, however, the class will spend some time studying the policy rationales underlying the structure of the current federal income tax laws and will consider the pros and cons of alternative systems. This course is a prerequisite to a number of other courses, including Corporate Taxation, Partnership Tax, Business and Estate Planning, and International Tax.

• Type: Upper Class

When assembled correctly, diverse teams consistently outperform homogeneous teams in a wide range of fields. They come up with more creative ideas. They make better decisions. And particularly in the business world, they produce more sales revenue and profit. Yet many organizations still can't figure out how to create and maintain these kinds of teams.
This course explores that disconnect through a combination of low-stakes practice and high-stakes projects. You'll form diverse teams. You'll critique diverse teams. And along the way, you'll have plenty of opportunities to develop two skills that can help members of any team operate more effectively: speaking well and writing well.

• Type: Practice Simulation

Since Bitcoin arrived on the scene in 2009, innovators have created thousands of cryptocurrencies -- digital representations of tokens that reside on blockchains. Many view them as the future of money. But what is "money"? In this seminar, we will first explore the economic theory of money and the legal infrastructure that is required for its stability and proliferation. We will also examine the financial history of money to understand what happens when money is poorly designed: financial crises. These building blocks will allow us to assess digital assets like cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies. We will focus on their implications for financial stability, monetary sovereignty, and national security, analyze proposed responses by Congress and financial regulatory agencies, and survey the evolving international landscape.

• Type: Seminar

Compensation at law for private wrongs and intentional wrongs as well as accidents, with principal emphasis on harms to person and property. Special areas such as product liability, defamation, or business torts will be treated selectively.

• Type: First Year Required

This course provides an overview of the federal trademark statute and related state law of unfair competition, trademark dilution, and right of publicity.

• Type: Upper Class

In this practice/simulation course, students will begin to develop the legal skills needed to represent clients in business transactions. Among other things, the seminar covers translating the client's business objectives into legal concepts, and then incorporating those concepts into the actual language of an agreement in clear, consistent, and concise manner. Students will learn how to analyze a contract from the client's perspective, with an eye to advancing the client's interests and protecting the client as much as possible from risk. The practice/simulation course also identifies how attorneys can use drafting techniques to solve problems that arise while a deal is being done. Students will engage in simulations and exercises in class, and undertake drafting assignments outside of class.

• Type: Practice Simulation

The Veterans Legal Clinic offers students the opportunity to learn holistic, client-centered lawyering through representing military veterans in a broad array of civil legal matters. While some of the cases the VLC handles are specific to this client population, such as veterans benefits cases and discharge upgrades, the majority of the clinic's cases involve broader civil legal issues, including family law, housing, consumer disputes, financial exploitation, disability, employment, public benefits, etc. The clinic seeks to foster in its students a strong professional identity, advocacy skills, and consistent engagement in reflective, intentional practice while providing excellent legal services to a severely underserved population. Students will take the lead in all aspects of their cases, including client interviews, pleading drafting, fact investigation, discovery, negotiation, court hearings, and trials. Students will also have the opportunity to interact professionally with a wide variety of social service, medical, mental health, and other providers in the effort to meet their clients' needs. The Veterans Legal Clinic meets the New York Pro Bono requirement.
Students must enroll for the 4-credit clinic and the 3-credit seminar, taken concurrently. The Veterans Legal Clinic is a 7-credit course; all credits are graded.
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

The Veterans Legal Clinic offers students the opportunity to learn holistic, client-centered lawyering through representing military veterans in a broad array of civil legal matters. While some of the cases the VLC handles are specific to this client population, such as veterans benefits cases and discharge upgrades, the majority of the clinic's cases involve broader civil legal issues, including family law, housing, consumer disputes, financial exploitation, disability, employment, public benefits, etc. The clinic seeks to foster in its students a strong professional identity, advocacy skills, and consistent engagement in reflective, intentional practice while providing excellent legal services to a severely underserved population. Students will take the lead in all aspects of their cases, including client interviews, pleading drafting, fact investigation, discovery, negotiation, court hearings, and trials. Students will also have the opportunity to interact professionally with a wide variety of social service, medical, mental health, and other providers in the effort to meet their clients' needs. The Veterans Legal Clinic meets the New York Pro Bono requirement.
Students must enroll for the 4-credit clinic and the 3-credit seminar, taken concurrently. The Veterans Legal Clinic is a 7-credit course; all credits are graded.
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