Course Descriptions, Taking and Defending Depositions - Writing for Law Practice

Taking and Defending Depositions

LW 907; 1 hour. This is a course in effective questioning strategies and techniques in deposition practice. Students will gain hands-on skills experience in taking and defending depositions. Topics to be covered include deposition strategy, preparation of the deponent, dealing with the difficult lawyer opponent, using exhibits during the deposition, furthering the case theory in depositions, and gaining the maximum of helpful information from the witness, including admissions. Students will attend classroom sessions, practice their skills in small workshop groups and review videotapes of their performances. The course will be graded.
Prerequisite(s): Evidence and either Trial Advocacy or ITAP.

Tax Policy Seminar

LW 823; 2 hours. The broad impact of tax legislation makes tax policy a topic relevant to every individual, business, and governmental entity in this country. This seminar focuses on the purposes presented as support for various tax regimes and specific tax laws. Students study and discuss statutes and regulations, legislative and administrative history, case law, and law review articles about tax policy and write and present a tax policy article.
Prerequisite(s): Taxation of Individual Income.

Taxation by State and Local Governments

LW 788; 2 hours. Surveys structure and concepts in sales, use, income, gross receipts, corporate franchise and property taxation. The course also focuses on interstate allocation or apportionment of tax burdens and the constitutional limitations of state taxing power.
Prerequisite(s): Taxation of Individual Income (recommended).

Taxation of Business Enterprises

LW 940; 3 hours. This course covers the tax consequences of forming, operating, and liquidating business enterprises. It will illustrate the effect tax law has on business and economic decisions, such as choice of legal entity, forms of compensation, and modes of distributing assets to enterprise owners. The course is essential for any person who will do transactional work in practice.
Prerequisite(s): Taxation of Individual Income.

Taxation of Individual Income

LW 790; 3 hours. This course introduces students to federal tax law. In the context of federal income taxation, the course focuses on the essential legal skills of reading, understanding, and applying statutes (the Internal Revenue Code) and administrative regulations. The prevalence of tax law makes the course important for every area of legal practice. The course will help students develop essential legal skills and also to spot tax issues that arise in numerous contexts. Students who wish to take additional tax courses should take this course during their second year because it is a prerequisite to most other tax courses.

Third Year Anywhere® Externship I

See Externship: Third Year Anywhere® I

Third Year Anywhere® Externship II

See Externship: Third Year Anywhere® II

Torts

LW 725; 4 hours. A survey of civil wrongs arising from breaches of legally imposed duties. The initial focus is on the intentional torts of assault, battery, false imprisonment, mental distress, conversion and trespass. The focus then turns to exploration of liability for negligently caused physical harm covering areas of general duty of care, breach, cause-in-fact, proximate cause, defenses and special or limited duties of care. There will be limited exploration of strict liability, products liability and protection of economic and dignitary interests such as defamation, malicious prosecution, fraud, and civil rights.

Torts: Product Liability and Privacy

LW 723; 2 hours. This course will explore the various liabiity regimes encountered in product liability and privacy. More specifically, the product liability aspect will include an examination of design defects, manufacturing defects, and warnings defects. The privacy aspect will explore the four privacy torts and examine the effect of the first amendment and the associated newsworthiness defense in an era of electronically stored information on the continued viability of the privacy torts.
Prerequisite(s): Torts.

Trademark Law

LW 898; 3 hours. This course focuses on federal statutory protections for trademarks and related source indicators. It covers substantive requirements and procedures for obtaining trademark protection from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the scope of protection once granted, standards for infringement and dilution, limitations and exceptions to protections, and appropriate remedies. The course also covers related federal and state doctrines such as unfair competition, anti-cybersquatting protections, issues related to domain name registration. At the discretion of the professor, the course may touch on the intersection of trademark rights with other legal frameworks such as privacy law, advertising law, Constitutional law, and international law.

Transactional Drafting

LW 707; 3 hours. This course teaches students a systematic approach to drafting legal documents associated with various types of transactions. By completing a variety of drafting exercises, students will learn to identify issues, further develop the analytical ability to research and isolate applicable substantive legal principles, and use the substantive law to draft documents designed to accomplish clients' goals. Drafting exercises will be reviewed and critiqued to provide students feedback as they practice identifying relevant legal principles and applying sound drafting techniques used by effective transactional lawyers.

Transactional Law Meet Competition

LW 889; 1-2 hours. The Transactional Law Meet Competition requires a team of students to research, analyze, draft, and negotiate complex issues of business and transactional law and then engage in a competition with similar student teams from other schools (the transactional equivalent of a moot court). Preference will be given to students who are pursuing the Business and Transactional Law Certificate and satisfies the Experiential Requirement for that certificate.
Learn more about this competition opportunity.

Trial Advocacy (and Intensive Trial Advocacy Program)

LW 766; 2 hours. This course concentrates on the trial phase of a civil and a criminal case. Emphasis is placed on development of skills and techniques for planning and trying a hypothetical case. Each student performs exercises with critiques from the instructor and group discussions and each participates in a full jury trial. This course is offered as either a 13-week full semester course or a one-week summer intersession course. Outstanding (equivalent of A work), credit (equivalent of C work), no-credit.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of or concurrent enrollment in Evidence.

Trial Advocacy Competition

LW 805; 1-2 hours. Open to students who have participated in an inter-law-school trial competition. Students who participate as advocates may receive one hour credit for each competition, for a total of two credits during law school. Students who only participate as witnesses may also receive credit, but may not earn more than one hour of credit for being a witness during law school as well as one hour of credit for participating as an advocate, if applicable. To receive any credit, participants must develop a substantial trial notebook for the competition. Credit, no-credit.

Tribal Law and Government

LW 941; 2-3 hours. U.S. lawyers increasingly find themselves representing clients in matters involving tribal courts, governments, lands, and citizens. This course will introduce students to the internal law and governance systems of the approximately 566 sovereign Indigenous nations located within the borders of the United States. Students will explore a rich variety of constitutional, executive, legislative, and judicial models. The class will also study various Indigenous North American approaches to substantive areas such as juvenile justice, environmental regulation, criminal sentencing, and so on. This course will provide critical knowledge to future practitioners in many fields, such as energy law, family law, and commercial litigation and transactions. It will also broaden skills in reading foreign law, navigating our complex federal legal system, understanding the legal challenges faced by developing nations, and gaining literacy in multi-cultural legal perspectives.

Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and Compliance

LW 892; 1-2 hours. The course will concentrate on legal tax compliance for individual taxpayers, and will encompass work with clients from the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program to put these legal rules into practice. VITA Site Coordinators and Directors would be eligible for this course, with professor permission, and will be able to choose 1 or 2 credit hours. The students in this course will be expected to develop a tax compliance training program, and administer it to the VITA program volunteers.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of professor.

Water Law

LW 742; 3 hours. This course covers both traditional water law rules and modern water management challenges. It covers Eastern and Western U.S. water law, examining both classic principles and statutory modifications of the riparian rights and prior appropriation doctrines. It also explores public dimensions of water law, the Public Trust Doctrine, environmental quality issues in water management, and government takings relating to water use restrictions and flood damages. In addressing issues from drought to flooding, the course considers the challenges posed by climate change for managing water resources in the 21st Century.

White Collar Crime

LW 936; 2-3 hours. This course examines the statutes, doctrinal developments, social and economic issues that are essential features of white collar crime. The course will venture well beyond the first-year Criminal Law survey course, while extending principles of conspiracy, theft, and mens rea concepts permitting derivative criminal liability. Topics include the jurisprudence of white collar crime, criminal liability of corporations and corporate executives, mail and wire fraud, tax and securities fraud, false claims against the government, money laundering and asset forfeiture. Throughout the course, students will be challenged to consider how the information learned in the course could be applied to better represent clients and to consider alternative approaches with potential to yield favorable outcomes that advance client interests and address the policies underlying criminal liability.
Prerequisite(s): Criminal Law.

Workers' Compensation

LW 781; 2 hours. The primary focus of this course is workers' compensation statutes although other selected areas concerning economic protection of employees, such as Social Security Insurance and Unemployment Insurance, may also be included.

Workplace Law Externship

See Externship: Workplace Law

Writing for Law Practice

LW 901; 3 hours. This course is designed to supplement the first-year curriculum by strengthening legal writing, analysis, and critical thinking skills. Students will learn to apply principles of logical analysis, plain English, and proper planning, organization, and drafting by preparing legal documents commonly assigned to new law firm associates. Students will be expected to develop a portfolio of graded writing assignments for a variety of audiences, including but not limited to client letters, dispositive motions, proposed jury instructions, and judicial opinions. The focus of the course is the enhancement of analytical writing skills for law practice. Enrollment is limited to 18 students.
Prerequisite(s): Legal Analysis, Research and Writing I and II.