Course Catalog

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

The Zell Entrepreneurship Clinic (ZEC) supports the University's burgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem by representing student-led entrepreneurial ventures as well as local startups and small businesses. Student attorneys in the ZEC encounter real-world transactional lawyering experiences with a focus on developing a business-oriented, client-centered mindset.

The ZEC offers transactional and counseling legal services to startups and established small companies in the following areas:

* Selecting and forming a legal entity and structuring ownership and capital

* Counseling on and prosecuting intellectual property matters (e.g., copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret)

* Drafting and negotiating contracts

* Advising on employment matters

* Assisting on corporate fundraising and finance issues

Students in the ZEC typically represent multiple clients and assume primary responsibility for all client matters under the close supervision of ZEC faculty. Student attorneys plan client matters; interview and counsel clients; draft various legal agreements, documents, correspondence and memos; prosecute patent and trademark applications; and identify and research legal issues to help their clients implement their decisions. Student attorneys also take turns offering community office hours where they provide legal information to local entrepreneurs. Furthermore, student attorneys are exposed to the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem through attendance of local events as a class. During the weekly seminar sessions, students discuss lawyering skills and values, ethical issues, client issues and some substantive law. Student attorneys review and reflect on their work and receive detailed feedback from ZEC faculty during weekly supervision meetings.

There are no prerequisites for taking the ZEC. Because much of the client work will be in corporate, tax, intellectual property, employment, and other business areas, students will likely find prior course work in those areas helpful.

• Type: Clinic

This course introduces the basic concepts and methods used in the preparation of the four corporate financial statements (the balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flows, and statement of stockholders' equity). In this process, the course will also develop the accounting treatment of specific items such as long-term assets, inventory, sales, receivables, and debt securities. The course will use actual corporate financial statements of Fortune 500 companies and will provide students the tools necessary to understand such statements as well as some of the basic footnote disclosures associated with such statements.

Students who have substantial background in financial accounting or who have taken classes in financial accounting are ineligible to take or receive credit for this course for a grade. However, students who took only an introductory class in financial accounting a significant amount of time ago may request permission from the instructor to take the course for a grade.

• Type: Upper Class

Students are enrolled by invitation only, after having expressed interest to one of the experiential education faculty or administrators. Students will receive between 2 to 5 credits, to be determined by the faculty member and students.

• Type: Externship

This graded course gives a select group of students who have excelled in a Problem Solving Initiative (PSI) class the chance to spend another semester, under faculty supervision, working on the subject matter of that PSI class. The course is designed to give students a more in-depth problem solving experience at a higher level of sophistication than may have been possible during their original PSI classes. Students may only enroll following PSI faculty invitation. Faculty and invited students determine the number of credits to be awarded.

• Type: Problem Solving Initiative

Public advocates -- advocates on matters of concern to the public at large -- often face big, important issues with few resources against almost overwhelming odds. We find ourselves battling large businesses, governments, or entire industries to stop a polluting mine, to restart a community's access to clean drinking water, or to restore voting rights. Yet in many cases, we somehow find a way to win. How is that possible? That is the question we will explore in this class. We will look at a series of case studies of successful and unsuccessful public advocacy campaigns that employed a wide variety of advocacy tools: media, organizing, lobbying, and litigation. The case studies will be drawn from civil rights, worker rights, democracy protection, and environmental campaigns. Students also will develop their own case studies and share them with the class. In the process, we will cover quite a bit of public interest law; every case will be grounded in statutes and common law, and many of them include significant litigation. As a class, we will explore why certain advocacy campaigns worked, why others didn't, who benefited from the victories and who suffered from the losses. As the semester progresses, we will develop rules and guidelines for good advocacy and a list of questions for good advocates to consider, culminating in a model for public advocacy.

• Type: Seminar

This course is designed to teach all students, however they plan to use their law school education, the skills necessary to creatively solve problems in whatever professional context they might arise. We use the classic James Harr's A Civil Action (Vintage 1996) to teach the interpersonal, communication and analytical skills lawyers need to become successful problem solvers. This story demonstrates how Jan Schlichtmann could have achieved a more successful outcome for his clients if only he had applied these basic skills in that case. With this foundation, we develop an understanding of problem- solving methodology and the use of negotiation and mediation, two of the primary ADR processes for solving problems. Experiential learning is the fundamental teaching method. Students will learn to apply negotiation and mediation theory in simulated exercises with students playing the roles of negotiator, mediator, advocate and client in these simulations. Students receive feedback on their performance based on in-class faculty observation as well a post-exercise class discussion. Arbitration is the third process within the ADR constellation. We begin with a discussion of ad how to determine whether arbitration is an appropriate process for solving a client's problem. Then, we focus on the legal infrastructure of arbitration, the Federal Arbitration Act and recent cases that have shaped the current arbitration legal landscape. We also discuss legislative efforts to address issues of fairness in arbitration, particularly focusing on mandatory class action waivers and their impact on consumers and employees. The course concludes with a discussion of other creative ways to resolve disputes, including the use of the apology and its use at the University of Michigan Hospital to address claims of medical malpractice.

• Type: Practice Simulation

This course is designed to teach all students, however they plan to use their law school education, the skills necessary to creatively solve problems in whatever professional context they might arise. We use the classic James Harr's A Civil Action (Vintage 1996) to teach the interpersonal, communication and analytical skills lawyers need to become successful problem solvers. This story demonstrates how Jan Schlichtmann could have achieved a more successful outcome for his clients if only he had applied these basic skills in that case. With this foundation, we develop an understanding of problem- solving methodology and the use of negotiation and mediation, two of the primary ADR processes for solving problems. Experiential learning is the fundamental teaching method. Students will learn to apply negotiation and mediation theory in simulated exercises with students playing the roles of negotiator, mediator, advocate and client in these simulations. Students receive feedback on their performance based on in-class faculty observation as well a post-exercise class discussion. Arbitration is the third process within the ADR constellation. We begin with a discussion of ad how to determine whether arbitration is an appropriate process for solving a client's problem. Then, we focus on the legal infrastructure of arbitration, the Federal Arbitration Act and recent cases that have shaped the current arbitration legal landscape. We also discuss legislative efforts to address issues of fairness in arbitration, particularly focusing on mandatory class action waivers and their impact on consumers and employees. The course concludes with a discussion of other creative ways to resolve disputes, including the use of the apology and its use at the University of Michigan Hospital to address claims of medical malpractice.

• Type: Practice Simulation

The relationship between antitrust law and democracy is at the center of current discussions about antitrust reform. This seminar will examine a variety of related concepts in historical perspective, including (among others) anti-domination as legal concept, labor and competition, wealth inequality and market structure, media and free speech, race and monopoly, economic concentration and fascism, technocracy and populism, and Big Tech power and democratic accountability.

• Type: Seminar

Using the airline industry as a case study, this course will explore a number of cutting-edge antitrust issues including (1) new approaches to collusion (such as price fixing through public statements to analysts and using algorithms to set prices), (2) how to evaluate efficiency claims in analyzing mergers and acquisitions in network industries, (3) how to assess challenges to single-firm exclusionary practices (such as predatory pricing and capacity expansions) in network industries, and (4) re-examining the consumer welfare standard that has dominated antitrust for almost 50 years. This course is open to students who have taken or are taking the basic antitrust course.

• Type: Seminar

This simulation course will help you develop the written and oral advocacy skills you'll need to be an effective appellate litigator (and which are highly desirable for many other forms of legal practice as well). You'll learn how to prepare and write an appellate brief and how to prepare and deliver an oral argument in court. While at times we will discuss general principles of persuasion, the course will focus more on nitty-gritty matters such as how to organize an argument; how to write effectively using well-constructed paragraphs and clear and crisp sentences; how to prepare for and handle oral questioning; and when if ever to adroitly split an infinitive or to end a sentence with a preposition you are enamored with.

Class sessions will include presentations, interactive conversations, in-class exercises, and peer (and my) review of student work. Over the course of the semester, you'll produce several drafts of a brief or portions thereof, focusing both on merits arguments and on the other components of a complete appellate brief. Occasionally you may be assigned other short writing exercises, either for class time or for homework. You will work independently on some projects and collaborate with classmates on others. You'll also present two or more oral arguments during class time.

The simulation exercises will be based on a mock appellate case. For most and perhaps all assignments, I'll provide you with copies of court decisions, rules, and statutes deemed relevant to the mock case; little outside research will be required. This course will demand a good deal of your time and attention throughout the semester, which I expect will be repaid by lots of constructive feedback.

Your work will be assessed on the quality of your written projects, your oral presentations, and your class participation in general.

• Type: Practice Simulation

This course begins with an introduction to debtor-creditor law and to the United States Bankruptcy Code. The course then turns to an examination of consumer bankruptcy law, including Chapter 7 liquidations and Chapter 13 repayment options. The course next turns to business bankruptcy law, focusing on all aspects of Chapter 11 reorganizations, including operating and financing in Chapter 11, reshaping the bankruptcy estate, developing and confirming a plan of reorganization, and other options for preserving value through Chapter 11. Throughout the term, the course will examine the law, the practice and the current issues in the bankruptcy system, as well as the organization and judicial process of the bankruptcy system.

• Type: Upper Class

This practice/simulation course will cover the entrepreneurial business, from its inception to its end -- by dissolution, liquidation, merger or public offering. Like Gaul, the course will be divided into three parts, which will be covered and interfaced with each other on a continuing basis -- state enterprise law, Federal income tax law and enterprise documentation. The range of subjects will include the choice of entity (partnership vs. corporation), tax implications (equity vs. debt), bringing in others (investors, key employees, independent contractors), protecting the enterprise (covenants not to compete or solicit business or customers, protection of intellectual property and confidential information), expanding the business (form and format for subsidiaries and affiliates, acquisitions and joint ventures) and mergers, consolidations and public offerings.

• Type: Practice Simulation

The Child Advocacy Law Clinic provides students with an in-depth, interdisciplinary experience in problems of child abuse and neglect and of children in foster care. The clinic represents parents in one Michigan county, children in another, and the Michigan Child Protection Agency in six counties all in specific child maltreatment and termination of parental rights cases. With close support and supervision of an interdisciplinary faculty, the law student addresses the complex legal, social, emotional, ethical, and public policy questions of when and how the state ought to intervene in family life on behalf of children. Law students will work with practicing professionals, faculty, and students from social work, psychology, pediatrics, and psychiatry. The Child Advocacy Law Clinic seeks to introduce students to their new lawyer identity, the substantive and skill demands of this new role, and the institutional framework within which lawyers operate. The Clinic especially focuses on the relationship between the lawyer and other professionals facing the same social problem. Building on the field experience of actual case handling as a basis for analysis, it seeks to make students more self-critical and reflective about various lawyering functions they must undertake. Students are asked to integrate legal theory with real human crises in the cases they handle. Students will develop habits of thought and standards of performance and learn how to learn from raw experience for their future professional growth. Students must enroll for the 4-credit clinic and the 3-credit seminar, taken concurrently. The Child Advocacy Law Clinic meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. CALC 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 Child Advocacy Law Clinic provides students with an in-depth, interdisciplinary experience in problems of child abuse and neglect and of children in foster care. The clinic represents parents in one Michigan county, children in another, and the Michigan Child Protection Agency in six counties all in specific child maltreatment and termination of parental rights cases. With close support and supervision of an interdisciplinary faculty, the law student addresses the complex legal, social, emotional, ethical, and public policy questions of when and how the state ought to intervene in family life on behalf of children. Law students will work with practicing professionals, faculty, and students from social work, psychology, pediatrics, and psychiatry. The Child Advocacy Law Clinic seeks to introduce students to their new lawyer identity, the substantive and skill demands of this new role, and the institutional framework within which lawyers operate. The Clinic especially focuses on the relationship between the lawyer and other professionals facing the same social problem. Building on the field experience of actual case handling as a basis for analysis, it seeks to make students more self-critical and reflective about various lawyering functions they must undertake. Students are asked to integrate legal theory with real human crises in the cases they handle. Students will develop habits of thought and standards of performance and learn how to learn from raw experience for their future professional growth. Students must enroll for the 4-credit clinic and the 3-credit seminar, taken concurrently. The Child Advocacy Law Clinic meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. CALC 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

Students in the child welfare appellate clinic will get an opportunity to improve their writing, research and oral advocacy skills by representing parents in direct appeals to the Michigan Court of Appeals of orders terminating their parental rights. Students, working in teams of two, will handle all aspects of the appellate case including reviewing the record, researching the legal issues, preparing the brief and handling the oral argument. Students may also have an opportunity to work on drafting amicus briefs and applications to the Michigan Supreme Court. The five-credit clinic will be co-taught by clinical professor, Vivek Sankaran and legal practice professor, Tim Pinto. There are no prerequisites for the course. The Child Welfare Appellate Clinic meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. CWAC is a 5 credit course of which all credits are graded.

The Clinic fulfills the Law School's professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

For students who matriculated in or after May 2016, the Clinic can either fulfill the Law School's professional responsibility requirement for graduation, fulfill the upper-level writing requirement, or the credits can count toward the Experiential Learning requirement -- it cannot be used to fulfill more than one of these three particular requirements.

• Type: Clinic

This course covers the basic institutions of civil litigation in an adversary jury trial system. It explores the different procedural devices that arise out of the relationships among the parties, the judge, and the jury. Many litigation topics are covered, including issues relating to pleadings, discovery, other pretrial procedures, joinder, preclusion, and jurisdiction.

• Type: First Year Required

This course covers the basic institutions of civil litigation in an adversary jury trial system. It explores the different procedural devices that arise out of the relationships among the parties, the judge, and the jury. Many litigation topics are covered, including issues relating to pleadings, discovery, other pretrial procedures, joinder, preclusion, and jurisdiction.

• Type: First Year Required

This course covers the basic institutions of civil litigation in an adversary jury trial system. It explores the different procedural devices that arise out of the relationships among the parties, the judge, and the jury. Many litigation topics are covered, including issues relating to pleadings, discovery, other pretrial procedures, joinder, preclusion, and jurisdiction.

• Type: First Year Required

Professor Chaney's section: This course will explore the practical, conceptual and procedural mechanics of civil rights practice through mock litigation of one or more simulated case studies. Students will engage the stages of litigation, including claim and defense development, preparing and answering pleadings, crafting written discovery, conducting effective depositions, and presenting oral argument, while exploring the nuanced issues that arise in civil rights practice, including client management, dealing with client and personal trauma and triggers, establishing noneconomic harm, and collaborative practice.

Professor Steinberg's section: This course examines how civil rights lawyers use federal civil rights litigation to address contemporary social problems. Students will develop and litigate a simulated case based on an actual racial profiling controversy in Ann Arbor. They will gain experience in client interviewing, public records requests, complaint drafting, responding to motions to dismiss, oral argument, depositions and negotiations. Students will learn how to overcome the many procedural obstacles to justice posed by 42 U.S.C. section 1983 and explore the ethical issues faced by public interest lawyers when representing clients in civil rights cases. The course will also emphasize how litigation can be most effective in achieving social change when it is a part of an "integrated advocacy" campaign that includes public education, legislation and/or community action.

• Type: Practice Simulation

Students litigate civil rights cases addressing issues such as: racial justice, police misconduct, voting rights, fair housing, student rights, free speech, women's rights, LGBT rights, immigrant rights, ethnic and religious discrimination, disability rights, and the right to privacy. Taught by the former long-time legal director of the ACLU of Michigan, the goal of the course is to prepare students to use the law to advance social justice. Students will have the chance to litigate civil rights cases on behalf of individuals as well as larger impact cases.

Students, under faculty supervision, will gain experience in many of the following areas: working with impacted communities to identify injustices; researching and developing winning legal theories; interviewing potential clients; writing public record requests and demand letters; drafting complaints; researching and writing briefs; arguing motions; taking depositions and engaging in other discovery; negotiating settlements; trying cases; drafting appellate briefs; and arguing appeals. It is anticipated that students will work primarily in federal court and will learn how to avoid the many procedural minefields that civil rights litigants face when seeking injunctive relief or recovering damages under 42 U.S.C. section 1983.

The course will also emphasize how litigation can be most effective in achieving change when it is part of an "integrated advocacy" campaign that includes public education, legislation and/or community action. Students will be encouraged to work in coalitions and with community groups to win not only in the court of law, but also in the court of public opinion.

The Civil Rights Litigation Practicum (Law 807) is a recommended but not required prerequisite for the Civil Rights Litigation Initiative. Students must take the Initiative for a letter grade; it is ineligible for letter grade conversion to pass ("P") election. It fulfills the Law School's professional responsibility requirement for graduation and the New York Pro-Bono requirement, but not the New York State Bar ethics requirement. The Initiative can either fulfill the Law School's professional responsibility requirement for graduation or the credits can count toward the Experiential Learning requirement, but not both.

• Type: Clinic

[aka Michigan Clinical Law Program]

The Michigan Clinical Law Program (MCLP) is a 7-credit litigation clinic that gives students the chance to practice law in a variety of issue areas affecting low-income clients. Students must enroll in the 4-credit clinic and the 3-credit seminar, taken concurrently. The clinic covers many areas of the law. The civil case-load changes term to term, but may include landlord-tenant, consumer, family law, public benefits, employment discrimination, asylum and refugee, contracts, torts, and prisoners' civil rights cases. We try to keep a wide mix of work, from simple one-issue cases to class actions raising issues of first impression. On the criminal side, students handle misdemeanor cases for their short-term files, and do (mostly post-conviction) felony cases for their more complex files. Students do all of the work for their clients (under faculty supervision), including interviewing, counseling, legal research, discovery, negotiation, motion practice, bench and jury trials, and appeals. Students have "first-chair" responsibility for their cases and primary responsibility for their clients. MCLP students handle cases in the state district, circuit, and probate courts, as well as the federal district courts, state and federal administrative agencies, and appeals to all levels of both court systems. The seminar and field-work are graded. The MCLP meets the NY bar pro bono requirement. A more detailed description can be found at: https://www.law.umich.edu/clinical/generalclinic/Pages/default.aspx

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

[aka Michigan Clinical Law Program]

The classroom component of the MCLP includes some trial advocacy simulations to introduce basic trial skills. Students must enroll in the 4-credit clinic and the 3-credit seminar, taken concurrently. Each student will also participate in two intensive trial practice exercises: a mock adversarial hearing at mid-term and a mock trial at the end of the term. Other class sessions address topics including the role of the lawyer, ethical issues in law practice, client-centered lawyering, the adversarial process, other related issues affecting the clinic's poor client population, and case rounds. The seminar and field-work are graded. The MCLP meets the NY bar pro bono requirement. For a more detailed description, see: https://www.law.umich.edu/clinical/generalclinic/Pages/default.aspx

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 electricity market, technologies and policies are transforming as rapidly as wireless telecommunications changed the ways that we live and work. In this seminar, we will learn about and discuss how legal and policy principles are adapting to climate change solutions, especially emerging distributed clean solar energy and battery storage technologies and a more competitive and decentralized electric power market. We will engage in simulations and role plays to better understand how dynamic energy law and policy issues are addressed in the regulatory and political arenas.

We will explore newly emerging "clean energy law," "climate law," and "environmental constitutionalism" as federal courts increasingly review, for the first time, the constitutionality of federal and state environmental and energy statutory standards. For example, what are the limits under the Commerce Clause, Supremacy Clause and the 10th Amendment on federal actions to encourage state clean energy and environmental policy actions, and in what circumstances should there be federal preemption of states' energy policy initiatives? Do the Commerce Clause and the Supremacy Clause affect state standards for new renewable energy development, and state subsidies for otherwise uneconomic old nuclear power plants to keep running? Can a state enact a renewable energy standard requiring utilities to purchase a percentage of their electricity supply from wind power and solar energy AND specify that those resources be principally provided from in-state generators? What are the constitutional and statutory lines of demarcation between the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's and state Public Utilities Commissions' regulatory authority for transmission siting and pricing, and for energy efficiency and demand response?

What challenges are presented by a federal system of government, based on state boundaries, in regulating energy generation, which produces commodities (i.e., electrons) and pollution that cross those boundaries? What are the benefits versus risks and harms of inconsistent standards in Justice Brandeis' "fifty laboratories of democracies"?

The common law has always been the remedy of last resort -- the bulwark of legal theories upon which laws are based and looked to when legislatures or policymakers have not addressed a specific issue. Is the common law a viable approach to addressing climate change in the first place, and what room does the U.S. Supreme Court's AEP decision leave open for state common law claims? What role, if any, should there be both for the federal and state common law of public nuisance? What's the difference? Why does it matter if federal common law remedies are displaced if the state common law remedies are not displaced and can continue to be asserted by plaintiffs? Is the common law a prod, a solution, or both?

This seminar will take place in "real time" while: (1) There is rapidly developing new energy case law with decisions issued by the United States Supreme Court and other courts in this area of emerging law; (2) Market forces and technological innovations -- rapidly improving distributed solar energy and energy storage, robust wind power, low-priced shale gas, and more energy efficient lighting, appliances and equipment -- are reshaping traditional energy markets and putting new economic pressures on aging baseload coal and nuclear plants; (3) The Trump Administration is moving to fundamentally change environmental and energy policies, but the federal Production Tax Credit for wind power and Investment Tax Credit for solar energy remain in force; (4) State and municipal governments are stepping up to accelerate climate change solutions -- including moving to implement clean energy development and clean transportation policies and innovative financing approaches -- while the federal government has been stepping back; and (5) The private sector is accelerating investments in cleaner energy developments and strategies.

One key opportunity and challenge for our society and government policymakers at all levels is how to construct policies that support both environmental progress -- healthier air and cleaner water, and open space with diverse habitat -- and economic growth together. This challenge is compounded by the growing realization that we must have policies that meet not just immediate needs, but future generations' needs as well by reducing carbon pollution that causes destructive climate change and by preserving natural resources both for their future use and their own intrinsic value. We will focus special attention on both the legal authorities and limitations under the Constitution and federalist system that policymakers, litigants and the public face in trying to achieve this goal.

Students receive 2.0 credits for this course with a final paper of 25-30 pages on a seminar-related topic of the student's choice. This final paper satisfies the Law School's Upper Level Writing Requirement. An additional 1.0 credit of Research (Law 900) is available for students writing a longer paper of 40-50 pages, which they are seeking to publish in a law journal or other similar venue.

Course requirements are engaged class participation (33% of grade) and the final paper (67% of grade) There are no prerequisites for the seminar although a previous environmental law or natural resources law class, and constitutional law and administrative law course(s), will be helpful.

• Type: Seminar

The purpose of this class is to familiarize students with the theoretical and practical aspects of collective bargaining and arbitration. Students will be assigned negotiation projects, asked to write arbitration awards and draft other documents commonly used in collective bargaining and arbitration.

• Type: Practice Simulation

The CEC is one of the law school's transactional legal clinics and prepares students for corporate and transactional practice in all sectors, including the private and nonprofit sectors. The CEC's mission is to promote economic, racial, and social justice and community and economic development in Detroit and other disinvested urban areas of the region. The clinic supports vibrant, diverse, and sustainable communities by providing transactional legal assistance to neighborhood-based small businesses, nonprofit organizations, community-based organizations, and social enterprises. Student attorneys interact with clients, normally represent multiple clients, and assume primary responsibility for all matters affecting their clients under close faculty supervision.

The CEC works with both start-up and established clients primarily in these areas:

* Entity formation, structuring, and governance

* Drafting, negotiating, and reviewing contracts and other agreements

* Tax

* Intellectual property

* Regulatory compliance

* Real estate and land use

* Employment

* Risk management

Student attorneys gain practical lawyering experience in the CEC. Student attorneys interview and counsel clients; develop and plan client strategy; draft legal documents, memos, and correspondence; manage relationships with clients, counterparties, co-counsel, and colleagues; identify legal issues, research them, and evaluate different alternatives; negotiate agreements; and implement client decisions. Student attorneys assess their own work and receive detailed feedback from CEC faculty in weekly meetings. The weekly seminar is a time for discussion of lawyering and client issues, including issues facing under-resourced communities in the Detroit metropolitan area and nationally, and the role race and racism have played in creating and continuing the adverse conditions in these communities and the processes of community and economic development in these urban areas.

The CEC prepares students for careers in corporate, government, or public interest practice. There are no formal prerequisites. Knowledge of business law, including the substantive law of enterprise organizations, tax, nonprofit, land use, intellectual property and employment is not necessary, but may be helpful.

Students receive seven credits for the Clinic: three for the seminar and four for the client work. Each component is graded separately. The CEC 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

The CEC is one of the law school's transactional legal clinics and prepares students for corporate and transactional practice in all sectors, including the private and nonprofit sectors. The CEC's mission is to promote economic, racial, and social justice and community and economic development in Detroit and other disinvested urban areas of the region. The clinic supports vibrant, diverse, and sustainable communities by providing transactional legal assistance to neighborhood-based small businesses, nonprofit organizations, community-based organizations, and social enterprises. Student attorneys interact with clients, normally represent multiple clients, and assume primary responsibility for all matters affecting their clients under close faculty supervision.

The CEC works with both start-up and established clients primarily in these areas:

* Entity formation, structuring, and governance

* Drafting, negotiating, and reviewing contracts and other agreements

* Tax

* Intellectual property

* Regulatory compliance

* Real estate and land use

* Employment

* Risk management

Student attorneys gain practical lawyering experience in the CEC. Student attorneys interview and counsel clients; develop and plan client strategy; draft legal documents, memos, and correspondence; manage relationships with clients, counterparties, co-counsel, and colleagues; identify legal issues, research them, and evaluate different alternatives; negotiate agreements; and implement client decisions. Student attorneys assess their own work and receive detailed feedback from CEC faculty in weekly meetings. The weekly seminar is a time for discussion of lawyering and client issues, including issues facing under-resourced communities in the Detroit metropolitan area and nationally, and the role race and racism have played in creating and continuing the adverse conditions in these communities and the processes of community and economic development in these urban areas.

The CEC prepares students for careers in corporate, government, or public interest practice. There are no formal prerequisites. Knowledge of business law, including the substantive law of enterprise organizations, tax, nonprofit, land use, intellectual property and employment is not necessary, but may be helpful.

Students receive seven credits for the Clinic: three for the seminar and four for the client work. Each component is graded separately. The CEC 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

The course involves a study of human rights issues drawing on material primarily from Europe and North America, and the Commonwealth. The course considers the meaning of particular human rights and their significance in theory and in practice, and the efficacy of the legal institutions designed to protect them. Several specific substantive issues (minority rights, freedom of speech, privacy, and equality) will be studied in depth to illustrate the complex interplay between theory, legal concepts and procedure, and between legal and non-legal sources of protection. It will draw on international human rights law, but will not be confined to it. The course as a whole will aim to provide the opportunity for in-depth comparative study, during which the appropriateness and utility of comparative legal techniques will be considered. There is no expectation that those taking the course will have taken any other course previously.

• Type: Upper Class

Consumer Class Actions and Complex Litigation

It seems that every term several Supreme Court decisions concern class actions -- and for good reason. Whether returning ill-gotten gains to aggrieved businesses and consumers, curbing illegal business practices, or restoring market integrity and fairness, class actions, by their nature, affect all of us. But because of their power and influence, class actions are also subject to misuse and abuse. This course will explore the jurisdictional, choice-of-law, and remedies issues arising in consumer class-action and other multidistrict litigation. In doing so, we will study the central role of the trial judge as activist case manager and will examine litigation strategies of plaintiffs' counsel, defense counsel, and in-house counsel. Our goal is to challenge students with real and modern class-action and complex-litigation questions and practical skills opportunties, so they can become familiar and comfortable with the numerous facets of multiparty and multidistrict complex and class-action litigation.

• Type: Practice Simulation

This course is an introduction to commercial and consumer law and lays the foundation for advanced study in commercial transactions, corporations, restitution, consumer credit, and investment securities. Substantively, the Contracts course deals with how contracts are formed, which contracts are valid, when a contract has been breached and the various remedies for breach, including damages, specific performance, and restitution. The course is also designed to introduce the student to legal methodology and the techniques of statutory interpretation, particularly in connection with the Uniform Commercial Code.

• Type: First Year Required

This course is an introduction to commercial and consumer law and lays the foundation for advanced study in commercial transactions, corporations, restitution, consumer credit, and investment securities. Substantively, the Contracts course deals with how contracts are formed, which contracts are valid, when a contract has been breached and the various remedies for breach, including damages, specific performance, and restitution. The course is also designed to introduce the student to legal methodology and the techniques of statutory interpretation, particularly in connection with the Uniform Commercial Code.

• Type: First Year Required

This is an introductory copyright course focusing on the public policies underlying U.S. copyright law, the way those policies have been fulfilled or thwarted by judicial decisions and by legislation, and the challenge of developing coherent copyright policy in a digital era. The course will also touch on the intersections between U.S. copyright law and international treaties, and upon other federal and state laws dealing with related subject matter.

• Type: Upper Class

The Corporate Lawyer is intended to be the first course for students interested in careers as corporate lawyers or representing public corporations. We will focus on ethical issues relating to the representation of a corporation, including conflicts and their waiver, confidentiality, and client identity. We will also address the ethical obligations that corporate lawyers owe to the courts and regulators, particularly the topic of whistleblowing. In addition, we will study the role of lawyers in advising corporate boards and officers with regard to their fiduciary obligations, and corporate governance issues, including corporate powers, shareholder voting rights, and liability issues. This course also introduces students to the regulation of public corporations under the securities laws, including the obligations imposed by the securities laws on corporate lawyers. This course has replaced Law 723 "The Public Corporation" in the curriculum. This course (or Enterprise Organization) is a prerequisite for many advanced corporate law classes. No prior background in business is assumed. Students who have previously taken The Public Corporation may not take this course, and students may not take both Enterprise Organization and The Corporate Lawyer for credit.

• Type: Upper Class

Corporate Reorganization takes up advanced topics in restructuring across a broad array of disciplines ranging from governance to game theory to prospect theory to restructuring, and to jurisdiction. Basic bankruptcy is not a prerequisite, but all students must agree to call out if I say something they do not understand. The course identifies dominant causes of business failure or distress, and analyzes how (a) corporate governance enhanced by the best business research of the last 20 years can mitigate or avoid failure and (b) chapter 11 resolves failure/distress and impacts out-of-court resolutions. We do this by reference to governance and business research, jurisprudence, and articles about failures in the auto, steel, financial, and manufacturing industries, and industries subject to mass tort liability. In formulating resolutions of distressed situations, we apply chapter 11 resolutions as a baseline against which out-of-court resolutions are compared. The course is designed to show that optimal restructuring is a multidisciplinary undertaking, even within its legal framework. Emphasis is put on governance jurisprudence, bankruptcy jurisprudence, statutory interpretation, the constitutional limits of the bankruptcy power, the psychology of restructuring, and the use of litigation.

• Type: Upper Class

Corporate Social Responsibility: Regulatory, Civil, and Criminal Approaches

Enforcement authorities at home and abroad wield an array of criminal, civil, and regulatory tools to promote corporate responsibility in relation to governmental corruption and human rights violations. This course will review in detail DOJ and SEC enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA"), building on this basis to discuss anti-corruption legislation in other countries and cross-border investigations. Turning back to the U.S., we will explore financial and trade regulation to promote good governance, including the U.S. sanctions and anti-money laundering regimes, securities disclosure-related initiatives to promote environment, social, and governance ("ESG") goals, and import restrictions and customs enforcement. We will conclude with an examination of regulatory initiatives in other counties and regional organizations to promote corporate responsibility for human rights. We assess how well these regimes promote corporate responsibility and reduce corruption and human rights risks, and explore the differences between civil/criminal enforcement and regulatory approaches in terms of their aims and outcomes.

• Type: Upper Class

This course concentrates on the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code bearing on domestic corporations. It deals with the tax consequences to corporations and their shareholders as a result of the events that take place during a corporation's life span. The course examines the tax consequences that can arise on: the formation of the corporation, the distribution of assets from the corporation, sales of corporate stock, reorganizations and divisions, and liquidations.

• Type: Upper Class

This is a clinical course in which each student is assigned to help represent an indigent defendant in the appeal of his or her felony conviction, under the supervision of attorneys from Michigan's State Appellate Defender Office. The focus of the course is on the completion of an effectively written appellate brief on behalf of the client, to be filed in state or federal court. The goal of the course is to develop the student's understanding and skill in all phases of appellate advocacy. The student will review the trial transcripts and lower court records, interview the client in prison (with the instructor), develop a strategy for appeal, conduct legal research, and help draft the client's brief on appeal. Feedback is provided by frequent individual meetings with the instructors, as well as oral argument before a panel of attorneys experienced in criminal law. The course gives the student the opportunity to work on a real case with real consequences for the client. While most directly relevant to those interested in criminal law, its lessons in appellate advocacy should be of general interest. Class size is limited to 12 students to assure individual attention to each student.

The Clinic is a 4 credit course and meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. Students must enroll in the 3 credit clinic and the 1 credit field component, taken concurrently. The 3 credit clinic and 1 credit field component are mandatory graded and ineligible for letter grade conversion to pass ("P") election.

The Clinic fulfills the Law School's professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

For students who matriculated in or after May 2016, the Clinic can either fulfill the Law School's professional responsibility requirement for graduation, fulfill the upper-level writing requirement, or the credits can count toward the Experiential Learning requirement -- it cannot be used to fulfill more than one of these three particular requirements.

• Type: Clinic