Introduction: Choosing Your Upper Level Courses
Course selection can be a difficult process, as it forces you to balance your personal and professional interests, scheduling conflicts, outside obligations, prerequisites and writing requirements, and myriad other factors. We cannot weigh these factors and make your choices for you, but we can provide information that we believe you will find helpful in thinking through your options, and in avoiding mistakes that others have commonly made.The advice offered here is not infallible, and if you talk to lawyers, friends, and faculty members, you will find intelligent opinions and advice that add to, clarify or even contradict what is offered here. But this guide should help you to make decisions that will enhance your education and your experience in the two years ahead and prepare you well for the career that follows.
In addition to reading this guide, you should feel free to consult with your faculty adviser, or any other member of the faculty – particularly those that teach in an area in which you are interested. (A list of full-time faculty members, grouped by area of interest and expertise, is included as Appendix B to this Course Selection Guide.) If you do not know who your faculty advisor is, please come to the Office of Student Affairs. You may also come to the Office of Student Affairs for course selection advice.
Course Selection and Planning
The single greatest mistake that students make is failing to consider what they want and need to accomplish in their second and third years before making decisions for the Fall of the second year. As a result, many students do not take vital prerequisites during their second year. In their third year, they find themselves unable to take courses they really want because they cannot fit the prerequisite and upper level courses into their schedules. For this reason, second year should be a year focused largely on “core” upper level courses that provide a broad foundation for the area(s) of law that you are considering for your career. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you go about selecting your courses.1. Understand the nuts and bolts: graduation requirements and the registration process.
Most of the courses that you will take in your second and third years of law school will be electives, but there are several requirements that you must satisfy in order to obtain your J.D. degree. The requirements for the J.D. degree are set forth in both the Hofstra Law School Student Handbook and Catalog (available in print and online on the Law School website). In brief, the requirements include:
- Completing at least 87 credits;
- Taking and passing required first year courses, and courses in Constitutional Law (in second year) and Lawyers’ Ethics or Ethics and Economics in Law Practice (in second or third year);
- Completing upper-class Writing Requirements I and II;
- Satisfying the Skills requirement (applies to students who matriculated in fall 2006 or later);
- Achieving a cumulative GPA of at least 2.0;
- Satisfying residency requirements.
Regardless of which program you are in, if you do not transfer between programs (full-time to part-time, or vice versa) during your law school career and always complete at least the minimum number of credit hours required for each program to maintain residency, you will not have any residency problems. If you transfer between programs or complete less than the per-semester minimum credit hour load required by the program you are in, you will have to pay close attention to the issue of residency requirements. You cannot graduate unless you are in compliance with them. The rules are complex, so if you are contemplating an accelerated graduation or a transfer between divisions, please review your course of study with either Rosann Kelly, Assistant Dean for Academic Records and Registrar, Brian Kaspar, the Assistant Registrar, Lisa McCluskey, the Director of Student Affairs, or Dean Rosenfeld.
There are also important limitations on the number of credits that you can take in non-classroom courses (Independent Study, Externship Program, Clinics, Journals, etc.), and on the total number of credits that you can take each semester. Because you alone are responsible for monitoring your compliance with these requirements, it’s crucial that you understand them before you pick your upper-level courses. If you have any questions about graduation requirements, feel free to stop by the Office of Academic Records (Room 114) or the Office of Student Affairs (Room 245) to ask for advice.
You must also make sure you understand how registration works. Read every page of the registration packet, including the instructions at the front of the Class Schedule booklet, and, of course, the list of courses offered in that semester. At the same time, be flexible and realistic; don’t become overly wedded to the first schedule you pick, as you may well find yourself closed out of some classes. If that happens, think of back-up courses that suit your needs or interests, and remember that you’ll have a better chance of getting into very popular classes when you are in your third year. Again, any questions about registration should be directed to the Office of Academic Records (Room 114).
2. Plan ahead.
Think strategically about course selection. For example, regardless of the area of law in which you plan to practice, you should almost certainly take Evidence and Business Organizations. They are important courses for thinking through many issues you will see throughout your career; they are also important courses for passing the Bar Exam. However, if you think you want to practice securities law, then you might not want to take space in the second year for Evidence, but might prefer instead to use that space for prerequisites that will allow you flexibility in taking upper level business courses, and take Evidence during third year. If your goal is to be a prosecutor, you will definitely want to take Evidence second year, and will probably be better off saving Business Organizations for your third year. When you read the Class Schedule booklet, pay close attention to the prerequisites for courses you would like to take. Knowing which courses have prerequisites, and what those prerequisites are, will help you develop a planned sequence of courses for your second and third years of law school.
3. Get a firm foundation. The first year curriculum provides a basic framework for thinking about the most common categories of legal problems. However, it barely begins to lay the substantive foundation on which you will have to draw as a lawyer. There are a number of areas with which you will need to have a basic familiarity for practice in almost any legal setting. Thus, during your remaining two years, you should take a substantial number of courses that provide these foundational elements.
These types of courses and their credits are listed below; the ones in bold should be taken by nearly every student. In all probability, you should take 4 or 5 other courses from this list as well. Moreover, as described more fully below, many of these topics are heavily tested on the Bar Exam. While the commercial Bar review courses do a good job of helping students “cram” for the Bar Exam during the summer after graduation, you will find that process far more manageable if you have already familiarized yourself with the material through a comprehensive law school course.
- Administrative Law (3)
- Alternatives to Litigation ( 3)
- Business Organizations (4)
- Commercial Transactions Survey (3)
- Criminal Procedure (4)
- Debtor-Creditor (3)
- Evidence (4)
- Employment Law (3)
- Family Law (3)
- Federal Income Taxation of Individuals (4)
- Real Estate Transactions (4)
- Selected Problems in New York Practice (3)
- Wills, Trusts & Estates (4)
The New York Bar Exam actually consists of two separate exams given over two days: a New York portion, written and graded by the New York Board of Law Examiners, and the Multistate Bar Exam, written and graded by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. As you will see from the information provided below, subjects covered in your required Law School classes (first-year courses and Constitutional Law) feature very prominently on both the New York and multistate portions of the examination. However, many of the tested topics are covered in courses that are offered only as electives. Although no student can take courses in every topic tested on the bar, every student should at least be familiar with the list of topics and keep that list in mind when selecting courses.
For more information about the New York Bar Exam, please visit the New York Board of Law Examiners Website at www.nybarexam.org. For more information about the Multistate Bar Exam and the Multistate Practice Test, please visit the National Conference of Bar Examiners website at http://www.ncbex.org.
The New York portion of the Bar Exam consists of 5 essays, 50 multiple choice questions and one Multistate Practice Test (MPT) drawn from the following subjects, in approximately the following frequency:
| approx. 60% of questions | approx. 30% of questions | approx. 10% of questions |
| Contracts | Constitutional Law | Secured Transactions |
| Sales | Evidence | Personal Property |
| Criminal Law | Commercial Paper | Conflict of Laws |
| Criminal Procedure | Mortgages | Federal Jurisdiction |
| Real Property | Trusts | Worker's Compensation |
| Torts | Future Interests | No-Fault Insurance |
| New York Practice | Equity | |
| Wills | Agency | |
| Corporations | Partnerships | |
| Domestic Relations |
The Multistate Bar Exam, which is administered in almost every jurisdiction, including New York, consists of 200 multiple choice questions -- 34 each in Contracts and Torts, and 33 each in Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, and Real Property. The subject matter breakdown of MBE questions in each area is set forth in Appendix A of this Course Selection Guide.
5. Develop an area of expertise. There is a tremendous difference between obtaining a basic familiarity with a subject and exploring it in depth, from different angles, over a period of time. At the same time you are developing a broad foundation, you should try to find an area of interest in which you can develop a real depth of knowledge and expertise by taking related courses that build on each other. That means introductory level courses and upper level courses in an area, and also courses in related areas that form part of the broader legal structure. If you are interested in criminal law, for example, you will want take a number of courses focusing on substantive criminal law, and others on skills important to a criminal lawyer, but also courses that help to put criminal law in a broader context (such as, for example, Law and Psychiatry, or Child Abuse & Neglect). If you are especially interested in a particular area, you may wish to register for a concentration in that area. (Information about Concentrations is available from the Office of Academic Records.)
6. Balance substantive courses and skills training, and remember to satisfy the skills requirement. If there is one common complaint from practicing lawyers about the job that law schools do training new lawyers, it is that students do not learn the basic skills they need to practice law. Hofstra is known for its expertise in teaching advocacy skills, and in recent years we have also been expanding our skills offerings on the corporate and commercial side. Our skills offerings, which are described in much greater detail below, include simulation courses, externships, and clinics, all of which can satisfy the skills requirement.
The first skill mentioned, always, is writing. You should take writing courses, and view writing as a vital professional skill that requires time, effort, and practice to develop. That means taking courses like Business Drafting, Complex Corporate Transactions, Litigation Drafting Skills, Pretrial Litigation, Advanced Legal Writing, and Advanced Appellate Advocacy.
But our skills offerings go far beyond teaching legal writing. We have an incredibly rich array of simulation-based courses, including two foundational skills courses – Trial Techniques and Legal Interviewing, Counseling and Negotiation (LICN) – that all students should consider taking. The specific courses vary from year to year, but include options such as Discovery I (Written) and Discovery II (Depositions); Prosecutor’s Role; Advanced Trial Advocacy; Mediation Skills; Introduction to Divorce Practice; Introduction to Child Advocacy; Transactional Lawyering and Business Drafting. We offer skills courses in a variety of formats, including full semester, weekend, intersession and summer intensives. If you matriculated in the fall of 2006 or later, we require that you take at least one skills course in order to graduate. The richness of our skills offerings may also be seen in the live-client clinical opportunities offered to students, as well as our growing externship programs and trial competition and moot court programs. Together, these courses offer you the opportunity to develop the expertise you will need to “hit the ground running” when you graduate.
7. Nothing is crucial. Eighty-seven credits are required for graduation, of which 39 are required courses and 48 are electives. In selecting your electives you will want to consider (a) which specific areas you want to focus on; (b) which related areas you want or need some background in; and (c) what courses you want to take for fun, because they interest you, for the Bar Exam, or “just because.”
Remember: The Law School’s curriculum exceeds what any one student can or should take. You cannot take every course offered even in your area of specialization, and no one course is critical to your education or preparation for practice. You have only 3 years (4 if you are part-time), and there is more law out there than anyone can learn in a lifetime.
It is important that you develop a foundation in a range of areas related to what you think will be your primary area of practice; over the long-run, however, it is more important to have exposure to a range of subject matters than to have taken every possible course in “your area.” You want to take enough courses in areas related to your proposed area of practice so that you understand the basic principles and vocabulary, the primary sources of law and client concerns, the ethical issues that commonly arise. But you will also find that taking a number of “unrelated” courses helps to broaden your perspective and enhance your ability to deal with complex problems that arise in practice. A course in jurisprudence, legal history, First Amendment, health law, or examination of expert witnesses may provide surprising payoffs; too narrow a focus inevitably reduces the practical, as well as personal, value of your education.
8. Follow your interests. You should be certain to provide some room in your schedule to “play,” to follow your interests. Take some courses that may not seem “practical,” but that interest you anyway. You have a great opportunity to explore areas of the law simply to satisfy your own intellectual curiosity, and opportunities like that get harder and harder to find once you are in practice. And you never know – that area that interests you, but isn’t practical, could end up opening an unexpected door.
With those general thoughts in mind, we now offer some further thoughts, put together by faculty members, on course selection in specific areas of the curriculum.