• Rising 2L students (current 1Ls): Remember that Professional Responsibility and Lawyering Skills III are required during your 2L year. If you do not take these classes in the Fall (or cannot get into them), you must take them in Spring 2014.
• Rising 3L students (current 2Ls): Don’t forget to make sure that you have taken all required courses and verify that you are satisfying all graduation requirements. 
• Don’t forget to register for the Mentor Externship Program course.  You must register for a 2L section (LAW 930) or a 3L section (LAW 933). The seminar counts as 1 credit for the year, calculated as 0 credits in the fall and 1 credit in the spring. 

• See Academic Policy III-A-2 for the maximum and minimum number if credits for which you may register, and for the residency requirements for graduation.
  • NOTE: If you come to your sixth semester with fewer than 12 credits remaining to graduate you may obtain the permission of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs to take fewer than 12 credits. You are also encouraged to check with the financial aid office to determine how a course load of fewer than 12 credits may affect your financial aid.  Attempting to graduate in fewer than six semesters requires additional coordination also with the Registrar and Director of the Mentor Externship.
• REMEMBER:  The required Mentor Externship course (1 credit per year) will count 1 credit toward your course load in the spring semester.

• Full Time Faculty
• All Adjunct Faculty
• New Adjunct Faculty for Fall 2013
  • Kevin Decker – Accounting for Lawyers (with Elizabeth Brama)
  • Rachel Myers– Lawyering Skills III
  • Paul Murphy – Criminal Procedure
  • Judge Kathleen Hvass Sanberg – Bankruptcy
  • Gary van Cleve – Land Use Law

Current Topics in Corporate and Securities Law (Prof. Tom Joyce), 2 credits

This class will examine five or six areas where the law is changing in interesting ways, due to new legislation, regulation or judicial trends. The professor will provide any necessary legal background and outline each area of change.  Students will select a research topic which will be a subtopic of one of the areas discussed. They will prepare a research paper and make a class presentation.  The required paper will meet the standards of the Upper Level Research Requirement. Everyone in the class will be expected to attend the presentations made by the other students and twenty five percent of the grade will depend on quizzes on each topic. There will be no final exam. Materials will be provided.  There will be no text book. Enrollment will be limited to 12 students. PREREQUISITE: Business Associations.

Game Theory and the Law (Visiting Prof. Barbara Luppi), 2 credits
Game theory is the study of strategic decision making. Game theory offers valuable insights that aid in understanding how laws affect human behavior. This course will introduce the formal tools of modern game theory, with illustrations and applications drawn from various areas of law. While many concepts in game theory have been developed using calculus and other advanced mathematical methods, this class offering will make only minimal use of formal mathematical tools beyond simple algebra. Nonetheless, students should be prepared to engage in rigorous analysis and must be willing to think through hard problems logically and carefully. The ultimate objective of this course is to show how game theory can change the way with which we think about legal problems and their solutions.

Justice (Prof. Dan Griffith), 3 credits
The primary goal of law is to bring about justice. Thus, an important antecedent question for lawyers is: what is justice? Justice is an interdisciplinary course which seeks to explore the concept of justice according to different academic disciplines: philosophy; scripture; history; literature; law and praxis. The primary intent of the course is to explore the nature of justice through different prisms with the goal of analyzing how law can better affect its goal of justice. By examining justice through various disciplines as well as the experience of justice and injustice in history and society, students will be better able to grasp the multi-faceted nature of justice, including its relation to law and policy.

The course will be comprised of two main sections: a theoretical examination of justice according to various disciplines and a praxis based analysis of justice in law and policy. The theoretical section is described above. In the praxis section of the course students will examine contemporary structures of society, law and policy in order to analyze whether they manifest justice or injustice according to what students learned in the foundational section. In the praxis section three contemporary issues will be covered: economic justice; criminal justice and immigration policy. Experts in each of these areas will be invited to lecture in class to help students learn the practical dimensions of these issues and their relation to the course topic of justice. Students may choose to write a longer paper for the course in satisfaction of the upper level writing requirement. If you have any questions about the course you may contact Fr. Griffith at dfgriffith@stthomas.edu.

Race, Healthcare, and the Law (Prof. Rene Bowser), 3 credits

A large body of published research reveals that racial and ethnic minorities receive a lower quality of health services, and are less likely to receive even routine medical procedures than are white Americans. In a broader sense, racial and ethnic disparities exist across nearly every measure of healthcare access and quality. These disparities span an alarming array of major diseases including heart disease, diabetes, end-stage renal disease and AIDS.  Most significantly, it is consistently documented that racial inequities in healthcare delivery result in higher incidences of  disease, higher rates of serious illness, more early deaths, and above all, preventable human suffering.  Health care disparities are not new --- throughout American history, law and social custom have relegated minority groups to different and inferior treatment.  Health care is no exception. This course explores the role of law and public policy in creating, reproducing, and, sometimes unwittingly, perpetuating health disparities.  The course also examines the potential of American law to reduce or eliminate these disparities.

Topics: Accounting for Lawyers (Adjunct Profs. Elizabeth Brama and Kevin Decker), 2 credits

This course will introduce the basics of accounting, finance, and audit concepts and skills to lawyers. Students will work with income statements, balance sheets, and financial statements. The course will help students understand the basic language and activities of financial accounting, and students will be required to apply concepts through solving problems.  The course will train students to work with fundamental accounting issues so that they can (1) provide better counsel for clients, (2) develop an understanding of what business accountants and auditors do; and (3) know when to seek additional professional opinions on accounting and financial matters. No prerequisites for the course (and the course is not aimed at students with significant background in accounting or finance), but students should expect to work with numbers in the context of learning basic accounting concepts.

Topics: Copyright (Prof. Tom Berg), 3 credits

Copyright law concerns legal protection for varying products of human creativity, including books and other writings, art, music, software, and other content in hard-copy or digital format.  Copyright-protected assets are increasingly important not just for particular creative industries, but for businesses and individuals in general.  This course covers the principles of the Copyright Act, cases interpreting it, and related legal doctrines concerning protection for creative activities.  Among the topics are how creators acquire rights and the basis for such rights; the scope of rights and definitions of infringement; countervailing limits on copyright to permit public access to works (and the moral and policy issues in striking such balances); distinctive issues presented by digital technology; and the interaction of copyright with state laws and international agreements. The course will be graded on two practical writing assignments and a final examination.

Topics: Ethical Leadership for Student Leaders (Profs. Neil Hamilton and Tom Holloran), 1 credit

In this course, we will help you as leaders of student organizations (or organizations outside of the building) to learn and grow from your experience as student leaders.  We will also help you “market” your experiences so that legal employers can understand how your experience meets their needs. The course has three objectives: (1) to introduce the basic principles of effective servant leadership and organizational management (including project management, budgeting, and teamwork); (2) to foster your habit of actively seeking feedback, moral dialogue on tough calls, and self-reflection (FDR); and (3) to help you actually implement your plan and practice your leadership and FDR skills in your organization during the semester.  Our empirical research indicates that the habit of FDR is the principal way that adults continue to grow over a lifetime in terms of both an internalized moral core of deep responsibilities for others as well as acting and leading authentically from that moral core.

After the introduction to these concepts in the first two days of the course, we will focus on particular leadership skills and management concepts and their application within your student organization while providing opportunities for feedback, dialogue, and reflection (FDR). During the semester, you will be implementing your plan for your organization with help from the course instructors and the other members of the class.

Learning by doing is an important part of our curriculum at St. Thomas. Experiential learning happens in a variety of formats in a number of classes (e.g., Client Interviewing and Counseling, Negotiation, Land Use Law, Copyright, and others). In addition to such classes, however, there are three major categories of courses that provide specific avenues for experiential learning.

• CLINICS.
  • We have greatly expanded our clinical offerings in the past year or two, and now have ten unique clinical offerings, with “advanced” options in some of the clinics.  In our clinical offerings, students work on real lawyering tasks on projects for clients – alongside experienced practitioners. Information about about registration for clinics has been provided separately.  See also here.
    
    
  • EXTERNSHIPS.  In our externships, students received academic credit for work in real-world environments where the students are honing and using their legal skills – whether in a business/corporate setting, a judicial setting, or a public service environment (public defender’s office, nonprofit organization, or others). More information is below on our three types of Externship courses: (1) Business Externship; (2) Judicial Externship; and (3) Public Service Externships
    
    
  • PRACTICUM COURSES.  These classes are limited-enrollment classes in which students delve more deeply into a particular area of law by working as lawyers on a simulated problem under close faculty supervision.  These courses provide particular opportunities to develop practical skills by combining doctrinal knowledge and real-world legal work.  Practicum courses are also designed to provide opportunities for extensive feedback and mentoring. 

Constitutional Litigation Practicum (Prof. Teresa Collett): This five-credit course will provide students an opportunity to enhance their effectiveness as a litigator in many areas such as development of claims or defense, trial strategy, direct examination, including use of documentary evidence, expert testimony, and dispositive motions.  Enrollment will be limited to eight students.

Community Banking Practicum (Adjunct Prof. Pat Weber). This course introduces community banking (typically banks with less than $1 billion in assets), using basic information regarding the banking regulatory structure to explore current issues facing community bankers and their counsel in today's ever-changing environment. The course will offer practical insight into the general challenges of a corporate practice. The initial classes will cover doctrinal banking law followed by practice-oriented classes dealing with current issues in today's banking environment. The end of the course will cover recent and ongoing legislation enacted to deal with the 2008 near-collapse of the financial system. Students need to be comfortable with financial statements, including either a basic background in finance or enrollment previously or concurrently in Accounting for Lawyers. Enrollment will be limited to sixteen students.

The Policy Manual explains the Upper-Level Writing requirement.  See Policy III-B-4. There are two ways you can satisfy the requirement.

First, some courses entail papers that either satisfy the requirement or may be expanded to satisfy the requirement. For Fall 2013, these courses are

• Current Topics in Corporate and Securities Law (Prof. Tom Joyce)
• First Amendment: Religious Liberty (Prof. Tom Berg)
• Game Theory and the Law (Visiting Prof. Barbara Luppi)
• Justice (Prof. Dan Griffith)
• Race, Healthcare and the Law (Prof. Rene Bowser)

Second, students are encouraged to undertake their supervised research paper as an independent project with a professor. Many professors are comfortable in several areas; consider the courses a professor teaches as a starting point for topic areas. But in any case, feel free to approach the professor to ask about the topic and she or he may likely be able to help. You can enroll in a supervised research course for one or two credits, or if you do not need the credits, you can simply write the paper under the faculty member’s supervision without receiving course credit.  You may not register for a supervised research topic class with a particular professor unless you have that professor’s permission. You need to fill out this form and return it to Jill Akervik.

Elective courses are offered yearly or in alternate years according to student demand, faculty availability, and other factors.  We cannot guarantee that any course will be offered in a given year. For your planning, however, please note that the following courses are particularly unlikely to be offered in 2014-15. You should consider taking a course on this list in Fall 2013 or Spring 2014 if you are particularly interested in it.

Fall 2013 Courses

• Community Banking Practicum (Adjunct Prof. Pat Weber)
• Copyright Law (Prof. Tom Berg)
• Current Topics in Corporate and Securities Law (Prof. Tom Joyce)
• Intellectual Property Litigation (Adjunct Profs. John Dragseth and Richard Anderson)
• Justice (Prof. Dan Griffith)
• Law in Literature (Adjunct Prof. Michael Murphy)
• Legal Malpractice (Adjunct Prof. Charles Lundberg)
• Race, Health Care, and the Law (Prof. Rene Bowser)
• Social Security Law (Adjunct Prof. David Washington)

Spring 2014 Courses

• Economics and Private Law (Visiting Prof. Barbara Luppi)
• Federal Estate and Gift Tax (Prof. Ben Carpenter)
• Infamous Trials (Prof. Julie Oseid)
• State and Local Tax (Adjunct Prof. Mark Sellner)
• Wrongful Convictions (Adjunct Prof. Julie Jonas)

The following courses have special registration materials or procedures.  You will not be able to register for them online.

Law school policies permit you to receive credits for courses outside UST Law, but limit the number of credits permitted.  Read these policies carefully, and contact Jill Akervik or Dean Nichols with questions.

• UST Non-Law Courses Policy
• Consortium Courses at Other Twin Cities Law Schools policy 

Please pay attention to prerequisites (marked with Xs in Class Finder).  You will not be permitted to register for a course without having completed the prerequisite(s). NOTE that required upper-level courses (Business Associations, Evidence, Professional Responsibility, and Lawyering Skills III) are prerequisites for a number of elective courses and externships.

To help you in course planning for your legal-practice interest, and to link you to UST Law faculty and other resources for particular subject areas and practice areas, visit the pages on the website in the “Academics” section.  The pages are in the areas of: To help you in course planning for your legal-practice interest, and to link you to UST Law faculty and other resources for particular subject areas and practice areas, visit the pages on the website in the “Academics” section.  The pages are in the areas of:

• Business and Corporate Law 
• Criminal Law
• General Practice
• Global and Comparative Law
• Civil Litigation and Dispute Resolution
• Public Interest Law 

DON’T NEGLECT courses that may sound “dry,” but that are essential to legal practice.  For example, read Professor Gene Hennig’s explanation of why his Secured Transactions course is so important.  Another example is our new Energy Law Practicum, which allows students to work with one of the most experienced energy law attorneys in the region on the type of projects that are in demand in a rapidly growing regulatory field.

To prevent overcrowding of wait lists, each student will be allowed to add his or her name on a wait list for only two courses that have otherwise closed; if you place yourself on more, you will be removed from them.  If a spot opens up in a course, Jill Akervik will contact you by e-mail and you will have 24 hours to respond before she offers the spot to the next person on the list. (You cannot move yourself from a waitlist into a course.) Waitlists will be processed weekly 

For information on Adding and Dropping courses, see Policy III-B-2. Note: The possibility of dropping clinic or externship courses is much more limited.

If you drop a course or withdraw from the university, your tuition refund will be calculated according to the following schedule (subject to federal regulations regarding Title IV federal financial aid):

One consideration in selecting courses, for many students, is whether a course is a “bar” course – that is, whether a course covers material that will be tested on the bar examination. While each state governs admission to its own bar, there has been a movement among several states (including Minnesota) toward the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE). The UBE Memo contains important information on what the UBE might mean for you. The last page of the memo also lists courses that are covered on the UBE. For your planning purposes, note that we will offer “bar” courses generally once each academic year -- and typically twice if the course is also a required part of our curriculum. For example, Evidence will be offered in both Fall 2013 and Spring 2014; Secured Transactions will be offered in Spring 2014 only.

Contact Chad Nosbusch with all questions about financial aid. 

During any semester in which you are enrolled as a full-time student, you may not engage in employment for more than 20 hours per week.  See Policy III-D-2. Do not arrange your schedule with the expectation of working more than that number.  This limitation is required by the American Bar Association and we expect that you will abide by the limit.  It is also enforced through course attendance policies, under which there are grading penalties for excessive absences.   

If, after completion of registration, enrollment in any course is so low that offering the course is not justified, we may cancel the course.  We will inform each of the students who had registered for the course that it has been cancelled and will offer them an opportunity to enroll in any course for which enrollment limits have not been satisfied.