Catalog

Project-based learning classes (PBL’s), a quite new form of curricular offering at NYLS, cover a range of subjects and offer you a chance to practice skills from client representation to project planning and collaboration. Classes are small, and the students in them, with close guidance from a faculty member, work together on carrying out a project that has concrete, real-world significance or otherwise involves lawyering skills. Often these classes are also clinics. Some, however, involve real-world issues but not lawyering work as such – for example, the creation of a website on a controversial legal subject. These courses, generally year-long, are offered for 2, 3 or 4 credits, and on Pass-Fail or graded basis, as decided by the professor.

Here is a brief overview of the kinds of projects that students in these courses undertake, and of the specific courses in these areas being offered in 2013-14:

In some project-based learning courses, students interact directly with real clients. (These classes are of course also clinics.) For example, students in the Immigration Law and Litigation Clinic are trained to interview children and/or their custodians in administrative immigration court and then to find counsel for those juveniles with potential grounds for blocking their removal (deportation). In other PBL’s, students have represented clients applying for legal guardianship of their developmentally disabled loved ones in Manhattan’s Surrogate’s Court, and advised the school board of Mamaroneck, New York, on its policy manual.
Other project-based learning courses involve students writing briefs, policy reports, and advocacy papers that are used in public presentations and legal proceedings. Because these classes involve real cases or policy campaigns, we consider them clinics as well. In the Racial Justice Advocacy Clinic , students can expect to work on a brief in a cutting-edge civil rights case. In the Civil Justice Through the Courts Clinic , students will assist in the advocacy efforts by the Center for Justice and Democracy on behalf of tort plaintiffs. And in the Building a Disability Rights Information Center for Asia and the Pacific Clinic , students will research and write up legal developments in this field as a step towards the potential creation of a Disability Rights Tribunal.
As the examples already given reflect, PBL students have opportunities to address timely legal issues. So, similarly, students in the Conservation Law and Policy Clinic work on projects from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a leading national and global conservation organization. Depending on TNC’s current concerns, class members might work on position papers on public conservation issues, education materials for the organization’s website, issues connected to private conservation transactions facilitated by TNC, legislative issues, or other matters. Students in the Center for Real Estate Studies Capstone Seminar (not offered in 2013-14) have also taken on such tasks as the development of a model lease for high-tech companies renting space in New York.
Some PBL courses’ central project is to have students produce and maintain websitesproviding commentary on important legal issues. For example, students in Detention in the War Against Terrorism post about U.S. detention policies and practices in Afghanistan on “Detained by U.S.,” www.detainedbyus.org. Students in our Legal Reporting classes cover legal issues in the news for the widely recognized “Legal As She Is Spoke” site, www.lasisblog.com. PBL students also contributed to the “CaseClothesed” website on the intersection between fashion and law, www.caseclothesed.com.
PBL projects can address virtually any area of law. Many have already been mentioned; one additional important focus has been on international and comparative law. For example, the VIS International Commercial Arbitration Moot Court Team ’s project is to prepare for and compete in an international commercial arbitration moot competition. Students in European Union Business Law have studied developments in European antitrust law, while those in the Transitional Justice Network class have worked on issues of international human rights and transitional justice.