Online Mental Disability Law Program: Program Overview

Presentation of Course Materials

The majority of course content is delivered via a convenient, multidimensional distance learning environment. Each 14-week course includes a comprehensive syllabus containing weekly recorded presentations available on streaming video, reading assignments, and learning objectives and study questions providing a focused study guide for students. Textbooks may be ordered online through the New York Law School bookstore. Students are responsible for viewing the presentations and completing the readings according to the weekly schedule provided online by the course instructor. All course information is posted on individual course web sites through a secure password-protected learning management system.

Internet Chat Rooms and Discussion Boards

The program uses the Internet to provide the highest possible quality and amount of peer/faculty interaction. The program’s online environment is a centralized, private, and secure interaction portal for students, professors, and program administrators. It hosts live weekly discussion sessions in a chat room (moderated by a professor), "threaded" discussion boards, and personalized e-mail access to the program's faculty and staff.

Live Seminars

Live seminars are held two times a semester for each course, over weekend days at New York Law School, usually within one month after the course begins, and at the end of each semester.  They provide an opportunity for students to connect in person with program faculty in order to best integrate the course material learned through the recordings, readings, discussion boards, and chat rooms.  These seminars are interactive and feature simulations and demonstrations in critical areas of mental disability law, such as  counseling clients with mental disabilities; involuntary civil commitment hearings; incompetency to stand trial hearings; and right to refuse medication decision-making.