Upper Level Writing Seminar Course Policy

Research Seminar (ULWR)

To qualify as a Research Seminar, a course must meet the following criteria:

A.  Enrollment. Enrollment is limited to twenty students to ensure regular interaction between faculty and students and among students in the course. 

B.  Instructor. The instructor must have scholarly expertise in the subject of the course and ordinarily will be a full-time resident or visiting member of the law school faculty.

C.  Content. The course must provide students an opportunity to conduct research and develop an original thesis in an aspect of a legal topic to which students have already been exposed in the first-year curriculum or a prerequisite course.  

D.  Written Work.  A student's grade must be based on: a) a paper requiring original legal research and writing of a minimum of 10 pages (exclusive of notes) in length per credit, or the equivalent (e.g., written work product of comparable length spread over several shorter papers); and b) at the instructor’s discretion, student participation and/or presentation that is different from that which is ordinarily expected in other courses.  If students are required to produce a single paper, students are expected to work on the paper throughout the semester and to submit for faculty assessment a thesis proposal, outline, rough draft and a final paper, each of which must meet the stated expectations of the instructor as to content, form, and timeliness.  If students are required to produce multiple papers, student effort and faculty assessment must be similarly rigorous.

Advanced Legal Writing Seminar  (AULWR)  

To qualify as an Advanced Legal Writing Seminar, a course must meet the following criteria:

A.  Enrollment: Enrollment is limited to twenty students to ensure regular interaction between faculty and students and among students in the course.

B.  Instructor:  The instructor must have scholarly or professional expertise in legal writing and ordinarily will be a full-time resident or visiting member of the law school faculty.

C.  Content.   The course must provide students an opportunity to refine legal writing skills previously acquired in the first year legal writing and research courses through written exercises and assessments.

D.  Written Work.  A student’s grade must be based on written work: (a) for a two credit class, five written exercises that require a written work product assessed by the faculty member of at least five double-spaced pages each; or (b) for a three credit class, a minimum of seven written exercises assessed by the faculty member that require a work product of at least 5 double-spaced pages each, or the equivalent.

Courses meeting the Upper Level Writing Seminar Requirement.

Individual Research and Writing Seminar (ULWR 996)

To satisfy the upper level writing requirement through an Individual Research and Writing Seminar, the student must prepare a course proposal which states the student’s and supervising professor’s goals and expectations for the course and describes the research and writing project or projects to be undertaken. The student must obtain the agreement of a faculty member to supervise the proposed course.  A resident law faculty member with scholarly or professional expertise relevant to the proposed project may supervise an Individual Research and Writing Seminar course.  Adjuncts, affiliate law faculty, and professors from other units of the University may not supervise.  

The student and faculty supervisor must submit a proposal for an Individual Research and Writing Seminar course to the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for approval as a one-semester course, which shall be approved provided the course offers a student a research and writing experience through regular weekly meetings between the faculty supervisor and the student, and which provides deadlines for and faculty assessment of an outline, drafts and final versions of one or more research and writing projects which together are at least 10 pages per credit in length and which are analogous in rigor and scope to those required for a Research Seminar (see D under Research Seminar above). The law school Registrar will enroll students in this course upon Associate Dean approval. Because this course satisfies a graduation requirement, the expectation is that the regular weekly meetings will involve substantial opportunities for learning between professor and student including discussion of appropriate readings relevant to the research and writing topic, much like the regular Research Seminar and unlike the primarily independent work a student conducts during an Independent Study .  Template for Individual Research and Writing Seminar Proposal (ULWR 996).