Course Catalog

The Child Advocacy Law Clinic provides students with an in-depth, interdisciplinary experience representing parents and children involved in the foster care system as well as children in custody cases. With close support and supervision of an interdisciplinary faculty, students address 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. The 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. 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 clinic meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement and 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 representing parents and children involved in the foster care system as well as children in custody cases. With close support and supervision of an interdisciplinary faculty, students address 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. The 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. 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 clinic meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement and fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

• Type: Clinic

China has struggled with “constitutionalism” since the late 19th century, and the last Chinese imperial dynasty’s attempt at domestic political reform and self-strengthening in the face of aggressive foreign powers, European and Asian. That early engagement with constitutionalism, however, was focused entirely on Qing Dynasty-led political institutional reform, specifically the establishment of a national consultative assembly or even legislature, and transformation of the Qing dynasty into a species of constitutional monarchy. A separate idea, “strict constitutionalism” or the authoritative review of legislative and regulatory enactments or government action for conformity with the higher principles enshrined in a written constitution, only gained attention in the early 1930s with the rise of the Guomindang (KMT) single party state and serious constraints placed on what many Chinese citizens perceived to be basic civil and political rights. This seminar will focus on the development of such “strict constitutionalism” in the Chinese world between 1895 and the present, focusing on the unique elements of this project in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 to date, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region transformed from a colony of the United Kingdom into a special administrative region of the PRC in 1997 Handover, and the Republic of China on Tawian as it has moved from “emergency” (military) rule to a more democratic system. Accordingly, the course will concentrate on the protection of basic human rights under domestic law (and constitutions) in the Chinese world, without significant consideration of how nation states in the Chinese world implement international human rights treaties domestically, whether directly or by incorporation of such treaty obligations into domestic law. Ultimately, the course will grapple with difficult questions about the basic suitability of such strict constitutionalism, or indeed the protection of basic civil and political rights against the state (or party behind the state) under domestic law, for Chinese world nation states, with some consideration of alternative mechanisms which might also ensure the protection of such rights.

• Type: Upper Class

With increasing frequency, cities and states are engaging in affirmative, plaintiff-side litigation. City and state initiated litigation, over the past decades, has resulted in some of the largest monetary judgments and settlement in U.S. history, including in the multistate tobacco litigation and the multi-jurisdiction opioid litigation. Cities and states also use affirmative litigation, often successfully, to push affirmative policy priorities—often against the federal government—in issue areas as diverse as climate change, civil rights, immigration, and others.
This class will take a close look at city and state-initiated litigation, from both a doctrinal and theoretical perspective. The course will cover the authority and causes of action cities and states have to sue. Case studies examined will include major, headline-grabbing cases including opioid litigation, gun litigation, climate-change litigation, and litigation against presidential administrations of both parties. We will also, however, examine smaller-scale cases brought at a local level, particularly in the State of Michigan. Through it all, we will examine broader questions: when is it appropriate for a city or state to sue? Who are their “clients,” and who do they represent? And when should litigation be initiated by governments as opposed to private plaintiffs?

• Type: Seminar

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

The Thirteenth Amendment, intended as a terrible swift sword of Emancipation, has since been a means with which to confront slavery and its legacies in domestic and international settings alike, whether in Peonage prosecutions, at the Nuremburg Trials, through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in federal hate crimes legislation, or as manifested in modern anti-trafficking regimes. But it also has been an uncashed promissory note, a set of loopholes used to justify prison labor, and — especially post-Brown — a tool supplanted by its companion Reconstruction Amendments. We will examine modern anti-trafficking efforts by exploring the post-Emancipation law of slavery from the Antebellum period through the modern era.
We will center our inquiry through the voices of the enslaved, from Antebellum “slave narratives” to modern survivor accounts and leadership, as well as assessing governmental responses through primary historical research. We will interrogate changes and commonalities in abolitionist activism and government enforcement, such as: sugar boycotts of the early 1800 echoed in today’s solutions of Worker-led Social Responsibility, supply chain transparency, and end-user liability; modern practices in prisons and detention centers traceable to convict leasing schemes of the Jim Crow era; and how the Progressive Era bifurcation of statutory and enforcement regimes around labor and sex trafficking (and the attitudes it reveals about immigration, morality, femininity, and whiteness) plays out in current debates over the sex industry and technology policy. We will explore race, gender, indigeneity, anti-Blackness, citizenship, rule of law, worker’s rights, immigration, prisoners’ and detainees’ rights, victims’ rights, colonialism, globalization, and federalism.

• Type: Upper Class

Students in the Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic and Veterans Legal Clinic attend class and practice law together. Students learn the fundamentals of litigation, which are readily transferable to any substantive area of practice or practice setting, from big law to legal services. They do so by litigating multiple real cases as first-chair attorneys on behalf of indigent clients, some of whom are veterans, and all of whom have a disproportionately high need for legal assistance. Students must concurrently enroll in the corresponding 4-credit Clinics course and 3-credit Clinics seminar (LAW 920 AND LAW 921).
The civil caseload changes term to term, but typically includes landlord-tenant, consumer, family law, public benefits, employment and employment discrimination, disability, contracts, torts, public benefits, civil rights, and military discharge cases. We try to keep a wide mix of work, from simple one-issue cases to large, complex cases raising issues of first impression. On the criminal side, students handle misdemeanor cases and post-conviction felony appeals and criminal record expungements.
Students have “first-chair” responsibility for their cases and primary responsibility for their clients. Under faculty supervision, students do all the legal work, including interviewing, counseling, legal research, discovery, negotiation with opposing counsel, motion practice and argument, bench and jury trials, and appeals. Students may handle cases in state district, circuit, and probate courts, as well as the federal district courts, state and federal administrative agencies, and appellate courts.
Both the seminar and fieldwork are graded. The Clinics meet the New York State Bar pro bono requirement (https://www.law.umich.edu/clinical/generalclinic/Pages/default.aspx). The Clinics 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 Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic and Veterans Legal Clinic attend class and practice law together. Students learn the fundamentals of litigation that are readily transferable to any substantive area of practice or practice setting, from big law to legal services. They do so by litigating multiple real cases as first chair attorney on behalf of indigent clients, some of whom are veterans. Students must concurrently enroll in the corresponding 4-credit Clinics course and 3-credit Clinics seminar (LAW 920 AND LAW 921).
The Clinics’ seminar component helps students develop fundamental litigation skills. Students participate in multiple simulations covering everything from interviewing to negotiation, multiple simulated courtroom exercises, and a mock jury trial at the end of the term. Other class sessions cover the role of the lawyer, ethical issues in law practice, client-centered lawyering, the adversarial process, issues affecting the Clinics’ client populations, and case rounds. Both the seminar and fieldwork are graded. The Clinics meets the New York State Bar pro bono requirement (https://www.law.umich.edu/clinical/generalclinic/Pages/default.aspx). It also fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

• Type: Clinic

This course covers the law and practice of commercial arbitration, from both a caselaw standpoint of cases interpreting and applying the Federal Arbitration Act and from practical experience and class exercises drawn on the professor’s over 30 years of experience practicing arbitration. The course also examines ethical and societal issues in arbitration, including arbitrator conflicts and consumer access to justice, all of which have created an active SCOTUS arbitration docket in the past 15 years. The goal of the course is to ground any future lawyer in arbitration practice and procedure. The course is very much hybrid in nature, since we do both traditional case readings and also participate in class exercises, including negotiation sessions and a practical organizational conference with the Arbitrator. From time to time, schedules permitting, I will ask my experienced arbitration colleagues to join us, either live or by Zoom. These have been popular events in past years.

• Type: Upper Class

This course primarily concerns the law governing credit transactions in which the collateral is personal property, but we will also touch briefly on some aspects of mortgages. Topics to be covered include collateral classification, attachment and perfection of security interests, priority among creditors, default and foreclosure, and the impact of bankruptcy law on secured transactions. We will pay close attention to Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, the fount of this law, as well as other UCC provisions, but we will also examine some real estate laws across the states. Instruction is driven by problem sets discussed in class.

• Type: Upper Class

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

This course will examine aggregate litigation in the federal courts, with a primary focus on class actions and multidistrict litigation. Topics will include attorney compensation; class certification procedures and requirements; settlement of class actions and multidistrict litigation; and the preclusive effects of class and non-class litigation.

• Type: Upper Class

In today’s increasingly borderless world, a growing number of juridically significant events — both consensual and accidental — implicate actors from, and interests of, more than one jurisdiction. The occurrence of such events raises the issue of which jurisdiction’s law should control the legal consequences flowing from them. Conflict of laws jurisprudence frames a series of rules (sometimes also called choice of law) which determine which jurisdiction’s laws, among a choice of several possibilities, will govern the legal rights and responsibilities flowing from these events.
The course and casebook — Felix and Whitten’s American Conflicts Law: Cases and Materials (5th ed.) — will focus on three areas of inquiry. The first is so-called “horizontal” choice of law. Where two or more jurisdictions which are juridical co-equals (two or more states, for example, or two or more countries) have a connection with a juridical event, which jurisdiction’s laws apply? The rules governing this question are more complicated than they appear at first blush, and there is a lack of uniformity in the operative conflict of laws rules among coordinate jurisdictions.
The second is so-called “vertical” choice of law. This topic area addresses the interplay between federal law and state law and the circumstances under which each will govern a legally significant event which implicates both federal and state interests. The course will analyze in detail the Supreme Court’s seminal holding in Erie v. Tompkins and Erie’s progeny as part of this inquiry.
The final focus will be a detailed analysis of judgments and their effects in other jurisdictions, and rules relating to personal jurisdiction which allow courts to adjudicate the legal interests of actors who have connections with jurisdictions other than the forum court.
While conflict of laws began as a highly theoretical discipline, the advent of modern technology has expanded exponentially the number of events which have multijurisdictional facets. The discipline is thus of critical importance to understanding the legal consequences of an enormous number of events.

• Type: Upper Class

Congressional Investigations of Presidential and Administration Misconduct
Congressional oversight is an indispensable component of our constitutional system of checks and balances. Recent inquiries concerning allegations of Administration and Presidential misconduct have become increasingly partisan. This has led to a series of lengthy and contentious disputes between the branches concerning congressional oversight authority and the scope and application of executive privilege. The seminar is designed to provide an in-depth understanding of: (i) Congressional rules, procedures, and practices applicable to oversight and impeachment investigations; (ii) Administration and DOJ legal opinions and guidelines applicable to congressional investigatory demands; and (iii) Federal court precedent with regard to congressional subpoena enforcement actions. We will also consider various proposed reforms to improve the functioning and operation of the investigatory process. The course will be drawn from the instructor’s experiences over 30 years as a House Judiciary Committee staffer — the last 20 as Democratic Staff Director and Chief Counsel.

• Type: Seminar

This course seeks to deepen students’ knowledge of American constitutional law and history in order to help them engage and evaluate approaches to constitutional interpretation. Topics to be covered may include the purpose and functions of the constitutional system, the eighteenth-century formation of the U.S. Constitution, the development of federalism, and the uses of history, doctrine, structure, text, and other resources in the process of constitutional decisionmaking.
Satisfactory completion of the introductory course in constitutional law (Law 540) is a prerequisite. For transfer students, the completion of the equivalent course at a different law school is sufficient to satisfy the prerequisite.

• Type: Upper Class

The course examines South Africa’s negotiated transition from apartheid to a genuinely representative democracy. The class will spend considerable time on the decisions of the new Constitutional Court, exploring its shaping of a constitutional jurisprudence, particularly with regard to equality and socio-economic rights.

• Type: Upper Class

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 seminar will consider the implications for libraries of the shift to ebooks. As libraries transition from physical collections that they own and curate to digital assets licensed by publishers and distributed by third-party platforms, how do their traditional roles and functions as institutions change? We will discuss the copyright doctrines that have historically afforded libraries considerable control over the acquisition, preservation, and lending of their collections — and the ways in which licensing models undermine that control. We will also explore the implications of this transition through the lenses of the First Amendment and patron privacy, among other concerns. And we will explore various strategies for reform, including ongoing litigation and legislative proposals.

• Type: Seminar

Corporate Governance and Investment Banking
This course will introduce students to the corporate governance and finance and capital market laws and best practices of various jurisdictions and to the role of international economy and politics in those areas through readings and analysis of relevant materials, including empirical studies on the corporate ownership and capital market structure.
The course will begin with an introduction to corporate governance in general and comparative corporate governance in particular as a new discipline of legal scholarship in the United States and in other countries. The class will cover the issues of international regulatory competition and arbitrage, cross-listing and bonding hypothesis, and international implications of the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Dodd-Frank Act.
This course will also introduce students to the basics of the law and business of global investment banking, and to the role of legal and investment professionals in the financial services industry and corporate governance and finance. Studies on recent developments in the capital markets and financial services industries in various jurisdictions will be followed by case studies on the history and business activities of major financial institutions of the world, including Goldman Sachs, UBS, Carlyle, and Deutsche Bank.
After that, the instructor will draw introductory studies on corporate governance from Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, Japan and Korea, and explore with the students how and why the respective corporate and securities laws of these countries are converging with those of the United States. The class will also look into corporate governance of some representative international companies in those jurisdictions, including Berkshire Hathaway, Disney, Volkswagen, Gazprom, and family-controlled public companies in those jurisdictions, including Porsche, Wallenberg, and Samsung.
The course will also address recent hedge fund activism case such as P&G from the perspectives of special situations practices of investment banks. In addition, the course will address corporate environmental and social responsibilities through studying such recent case as ExxonMobil and analyzing stewardship codes around the world with their impacts on the shareholders’ meeting. Further, the course will evaluate BlackRock’s new ESG policy statement in comparison with the holding of Dodge v. Ford Motor. With that the course concludes discussing the role of corporate governance in social developments in emerging jurisdictions.

• 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

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

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 effecitvely 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

This course will consider problems relating to the police role in the administration of criminal justice and judicial enforcement of limitations upon police practices. We will focus primarily on the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments and will answer the following questions: (1) When can the police stop, search, and/or arrest people? (2) When can the police search cars, homes, and offices and for what? (3) What are the laws surrounding police interrogation and confessions? (4) Who has a right to counsel and when and how is it triggered? (5) How are police line-ups and other identification procedures conducted and what are the constitutional limits on such procedures? (6) What remedy does a defendant have if his/her constitutional criminal procedure rights are violated? When is the evidence excluded and when should it be excluded?

• Type: Upper Class

This course examines the application of legal principles as a limitation on the definition of crime; the theories underlying criminal law; and the problems of the imposition and execution of sentences. Also examined are various specific areas of substantive criminal law, including: (1) general principles applicable to all crimes, e.g., mistake, causation, legal insanity, intoxication, and rules of justification and excuse; (2) accountability for the acts of others; and (3) attempt and conspiracy.

• Type: First Year Required

An analysis of the legal and practical problems presented in the administration of criminal justice from the point of bail to post conviction review. Subjects include: prosecutor’s discretion, preliminary examination, grand jury operations, discovery, joinder and severance of parties and offenses, plea negotiations, acceptance of guilty pleas, selection and role of the jury in criminal trials, selected trial problems, sentencing, appellate and habeas corpus review, and professional responsibilities of the prosecutor and defense attorney.

• Type: Upper Class

Over the last few years interest in cryptoassets, or more broadly digital assets, has skyrocketed. This has raised many critical legal and regulatory issues related to the emerging cryptoeconomy and its regulation and how that impacts the global growth of “Web3.” This course explores the business and regulatory issues associated with the growth of cryptoassets. We begin with a discussion of what cryptoassets or digital assets are and how they rely on blockchain technology. We will discuss some of the most common types of cryptoassets (e.g., cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, utility tokens, and those that operate by “smart contracts”) and how interest in using them, and in trading them, has grown geometrically over the last few years. We then turn to a series of regulatory issues surrounding the rise of the cryptoeconomy. This will include laws related to trading digital assets, policing their effects on customers and investors (e.g., fraud), money laundering and banking concerns, potential national security considerations, data privacy and cybersecurity, and a host of other issues. We discuss how the cryptoeconomy is different in important ways for regulatory purposes and address some of the emerging global political economy questions that are on the near horizon. There are no pre-requisites for this seminar and the grade for the seminar is based on actively participating in class sessions and submitting five (5) reaction papers to the readings. There are thirteen sessions and students can pick the 5 sessions for which they wish to write reactions papers. Each paper should be five (5) double spaced pages long. With the permission of the instructor students may write a paper in lieu of the reaction memos.

• Type: Seminar

From near limitless data collection to state-sponsored cyberattacks, cybersecurity affects us all. Cybersecurity addresses how individuals, companies, and governments attack and defend from each other in cyberspace, using digital devices and networks. This course addresses the wide range of legal (U.S. and international law) and policy issues associated with the rapidly evolving world of cybersecurity. Intended as an introduction to the topic, this course will begin with a brief overview of the internet and the cyber spectrum, from surveillance through destructive attacks. We will then cover the legal and policy dimensions around defensive and offensive cybersecurity. Topics include incident disclosure, data breaches, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, cyber espionage, election interference, and cyberattacks. No technical knowledge is needed.

• Type: Upper Class

Digital Lawyering: Advocacy in the Age of AI
All lawyers are now digital lawyers. From Zoom hearings, to e-discovery, to AI-enhanced research and writing, the practice of law increasingly requires the skillful navigation of a wide range of technological tools. It’s no longer enough to be book smart and street smart. More and more, you also have to be byte-smart.
This course is designed to help you navigate that transition. It takes a skill-building approach to advocacy in the age of artificial intelligence. Which tools are worth using? What questions are worth asking? And how do lawyers of all kinds continue to add value to clients in a world where competition for legal services comes from chatbots, algorithms, and a growing number of other powerful digital products?

• Type: Practice Simulation

Economic analysis is one of the major theoretical approaches to the study of law. Broadly speaking, economics as a discipline seeks to understand decision-making and choice, often under uncertainty and in the face of various real-world constraints. Economic analysis of law focuses on how law and legal rules affect (a) the behavior of individuals and firms, (b) the allocation of risk across individuals, and (c) the distribution of resources in society. This introductory course covers the basic concepts of law and economics, including the Coase Theorem, the difference between property rules and liability rules, the allocative effects of alternative tort rules (e.g., strict liability versus negligence), the design of efficient contract damages, the role of insurance, as well as the economics of criminal law. This course will focus on developing basic intuitions, and it will do this by applying economic ideas to realistic legal scenarios and problems. Problem solving helps to solidify understanding. By the end of the course, students will appreciate the complex range of economic considerations swirling around legal practice and law design. Students will develop the ability to apply economic principles to legal questions in many areas of law, both to predict the effects of alternative legal rules and to identify what rules would be “optimal” in particular contexts. Students will also develop the ability to offer forceful critiques of economic arguments as applied to the law, to identify the underlying assumptions and spot flaws in the reasoning. No prior knowledge of economics is assumed. Furthermore, grasping the power of economic thinking and its relevance to law and policy does not require a technical background. Still, there are enough moving parts, and trade-offs, that sometimes writing ideas down as simple equations and using straightforward examples helps to develop intuition and facility with the concepts.

• Type: Upper Class

This course is an introduction to U.S. energy law. The first portion of the course introduces the nation’s sources of energy: coal, oil, biofuels, natural gas, hydropower, nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal energy, and energy efficiency. In doing so, it explores the physical, market, and legal structures within which these energy sources are extracted, transported, and converted into energy. The second portion of the course turns to the two major sectors of our energy economy — electricity and transportation — and the full range of federal and state regulation of each sector. The third portion of the course explores case studies of hot topics in energy law and policy that highlight the complex transitions taking place in the energy system. These topics may include electric grid modernization, electric vehicles, the role of energy innovation in addressing climate change, and the continued role of nuclear energy. In addition to traditional textbook reading and class discussion, the course may include industry, government, and nonprofit guest speaker presentations.

• Type: Upper Class

Enterprise Organization introduces the law governing the organization of business entities, including agency, partnership, limited liability companies, and corporations, including closely-held corporations. It provides a general introduction to business organizations for students who intend to pursue a wide variety of careers, not just corporate law. The duties of agents to their principals, partners to their co-partners, and directors and officers to their corporations and shareholders are covered. Some sections may cover mergers and acquisitions as well. This course (or Corporate Lawyer: Law & Ethics) is either a prerequisite or provides an important foundation for a number of advanced corporate law classes. (Please check the footnotes for each class about information about pre-requisites.) Students may not take both Enterprise Organization and Corporate Lawyer: Law & Ethics for credit.

• Type: Upper Class

This course will explore the intersection of rights of publicity, trademark, copyright, contract, culture, technology, the “law of ideas,” Free Speech, and privacy in the entertainment industries. We will focus on music, film, literature, television, and social media. Through the lenses of negotiation and litigation, we will examine the roles of those who create, collaborate, perform, disseminate, promote, merchandise, and financially support creative properties and celebrities.

• Type: Upper Class

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

Every day with regard to the environment, decisions are made and actions are taken that disproportionately impact people of color, indigenous peoples, and the poor. Can we ever achieve environmental justice through the law?
This course examines whether and how our legal system can address environmental racism and other forms of environmental injustice. After covering the history of the environmental justice movement as both a social and legal phenomenon, we will explore and assess the legal frameworks available to address environmental injustice. With regard to legal frameworks, we will spend most of our time on tort, civil rights, environmental-administrative, and land use & zoning. The environmental administrative framework will include pollution control laws (e.g. Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act), utility rate-setting, management of natural resources & public lands, and climate change. Apart from traditional legal materials, we will also read social science & public health scholarship, newspaper articles, history, philosophy, and literature.

• Type: Seminar

This course provides an introduction to the laws and regulations we use to address environmental harms. It focuses on the major pollution control statutes, particularly the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Recovery Act, and Toxic Substances Control Act. We will also examine the role of the courts in interpreting these statutes as well as the underlying scientific, economic, and policy rationales for environmental protection. Recurring themes will include the balance of federal and state authority, the influence of interest groups (both industry and environmental organizations) on environmental policy, and the disparate impact of pollution on vulnerable populations. The course will also cover recent developments in administrative and constitutional law that have significant implications for environmental regulation, such as the major questions and non-delegation doctrines.

• Type: Upper Class

The Clinic offers students the opportunity to learn to be effective advocates while representing the National Wildlife Federation. NWF pursues its mission to conserve wildlife in administrative, judicial, and legislative forums, and through a wide range of educational programs and publications. The course has both a clinical and a classroom component. Clinical work will teach students the mechanics of litigation, primarily in state or federal appellate venues, as well as pertinent environmental laws and administrative law. Students will also practice investigative, research, and writing skills. Class work will introduce students to principles and techniques relevant to the clinical work, and may include such subjects as drafting pleadings and motions; oral argument; and negotiation. The Clinic is a graded seven-credit-hour offering. Students must enroll in the 4 credit clinic and the 3 credit seminar, taken concurrently. Credits count toward New York’s pro bono requirement. Courses in administrative and environmental law are not prerequisites, but would be helpful.
The Clinic fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

• Type: Clinic

The Clinic offers students the opportunity to learn to be effective advocates while representing the National Wildlife Federation. NWF pursues its mission to conserve wildlife in administrative, judicial, and legislative forums, and through a wide range of educational programs and publications. The course has both a clinical and a classroom component. Clinical work will teach students the mechanics of litigation, primarily in state or federal appellate venues, as well as pertinent environmental laws and administrative law. Students will also practice investigative, research, and writing skills. Class work will introduce students to principles and techniques relevant to the clinical work, and may include such subjects as drafting pleadings and motions; oral argument; and negotiation. The Clinic is a graded seven-credit-hour offering. Students must enroll in the 4 credit clinic and the 3 credit seminar, taken concurrently. Credits count toward New York’s pro bono requirement. Courses in administrative and environmental law are not prerequisites, but would be helpful.
The Clinic fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

• Type: Clinic

This course focuses on the procedural rules that regulate the use of evidence at trial. The rules covered include those relating to the competence of witnesses, the mode of examination, relevance, impeachment, character evidence, hearsay, expert evidence, privileges, and judicial notice. Particular attention is paid to the Federal Rules of Evidence.

• Type: Upper Class