Applied Analysis

Applied Analysis is a required first-semester course designed to encourage critical thinking about the process of legal reasoning. The class prepares you to learn how legal reading differs from other reading, how legal arguments are constructed, how to derive rules from case law, and how to synthesize rules derived from cases to apply them to new factual settings.  We will also be examining how propositions are supported by authority, and the balance between authority and precedent on the one hand, and creative legal argument on the other.

This course focuses not just on mastery of legal rules, but on the development of legal skills. To succeed, students are expected to actively collaborate with small groups to complete assignments, to be prepared for class, and to actively participate in class discussions and on the Web Course.

This course can be viewed as the lab for the doctrinal courses students are taking the first semester of law school, and should assist students in learning how to read, understand, analyze and apply the cases and statutes they are learning in those classes.  It also provides the opportunity very early in the semester for students to ask questions about the methods employed in other classes and provides an opportunity to learn in small groups.

Principles of Legal Analysis

Principles of Legal Analysis (PLA) is offered in the second semester for full-time students and in the third semester to part-time students.  The course is coordinated with other classes that students are taking, and offers focuses on developing those fundamental skills of legal analysis students have not yet grasped.  Students work on numerous written exercises drawn from the material that they are studying in other courses, and receive extensive commentary and feedback on their progress in analyzing and applying legal doctrine.

Comprehensive Curriculum Program (CCP)