Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• LAW BK 983: Central Banks, Commercial Banks, and Financial Markets
  This course introduces lawyers to the economics of financial markets and institutions. Emphasis is placed on the interaction of commercial banks, the Federal Reserve System, and monetary policy. Other topics include the characteristics of financial instruments (such as Treasury securities, corporate stocks and bonds, and secondary market mortgage-backed securities), how they are priced in the market, the factors determining the level and shape of the Treasury yield curve, and the relationship between commercial banking and the growth of the over-the-counter derivatives market. Course grades will be based on midterm and final examinations, and on written assignments.
• LAW BK 987: Securitization
  Securitization and structured finance together constitute one of the most dynamic segments of the financial markets. Securitization involves the creation and issuance of securities backed by one or more assets which generate cash flows sufficient to fund the securities. Structured finance includes securitization as well as transactions in which securities are not issued, but which involve the often complex structuring of cash flows to achieve a desired tax, accounting or financial objective. These transactions often cut across many areas of legal specialization, including bank and thrift regulation, securities regulation, taxation, bankruptcy and insolvency, fiduciary law, real estate law and environmental law. This course examines a series of actual transactions to explore the sometimes contradictory ways that these various legal constructs impinge upon the structuring transactions. Examples include single-family mortgage pools, trade receivable securitizations and commercial mortgage securitizations. This course also explores some of the more cutting-edge securitizations of exotic asset classes such as legal fees, intellectual property and renewable energy assets.
• LAW BK 988: Mergers and Acquisitions
  This course deals with key issues that arise in bank mergers and acquisitions. Business and transactional topics include: merger and acquisition strategies, deal structure and pricing, hostile takeovers and defenses, duties of directors, disclosure obligations, due diligence, mergers of equals, social issues, tax considerations, and accounting issues. Regulatory topics include: federal and state approval processes, regulatory considerations in the structuring of transactions, antitrust considerations, interstate banking issues, the Community Reinvestment Act, thrift and other nonbank acquisitions, Glass-Steagall and Bank Holding Company Act issues, and cross- industry transactions.
• LAW BK 990: Government Regulation of Insurance
  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), better known as health care reform, is the most important and controversial piece of federal social legislation of this generation. It is also basically an insurance regulatory statute. PPACA establishes a new and complex set of rules governing the operation of the health insurance industry, provides consumers with important rights with respect to access to medical care and imposes obligations with respect to health insurance on both businesses and individuals. The course will look at PPACA and the issues that surrounded its enactment--issues which continue to fuel debate over whether it should modified or repealed. This will be done as part of an examination of the regulatory rules that govern all of insurance industry?s products (annuities, auto, home owners? product liability, life insurance, etc). The course also takes a look at the insurance industry?s structure and financial performance and at the competitive interactions between the insurance, banking and securities industries. The impact on the industry of the financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting Dodd-Frank reform legislation will be reviewed.
• LAW BK 991: Commercial Lending
  This course studies the legal problems involved in negotiating and documenting various types of commercial lending transactions ranging from short-term unsecured loans to secured and long-term financings. The process is followed from the initial identification of a lending opportunity to pre- commitment correspondence and commitment letters, through to the key documents required at closing. The major aspects of a loan agreement, including definitional provisions, representations and warranties, lending provisions, pricing, affirmative and negative covenants, and events of defaults are studied in detail in an effort to insure that each student understands the mechanics of a commercial loan agreement. Security interests in real estate and personal property are addressed. Loan syndications and the loan markets are examined. Issues relating to guaranties and subordination agreements are considered. Overviews of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and lender liability are provided. Provisions of the Bank Holding Company Act relating to financing transactions, legal lending limits, margin requirements, and usury are considered. A lecture and discussion format is employed. Reading assignments include relevant court decisions, articles, and actual transaction documents.
• LAW BK 995: Consumer Financial Services
  This class presents an overview of the laws relating to traditional and innovative consumer financial products and services, including the impact of the new consumer protection provisions of the Dodd-Frank banking law on creditors and consumers. The course focuses on federal consumer financial laws governing installment, revolving, and real estate lending, credit and debit cards; and ATM networks, point of sale payment systems, home banking, stored value and prepaid cards; and other deposit and loan products and services. The course examines the design of retail financial products and considers operational issues, the regulatory framework, and consumer protection laws including The Consumer Financial Protection Act, Truth in Lending, Equal Credit Opportunity, Community Reinvestment Acts, and federal and state laws governing fair credit reporting, trade practices, usury, electronic funds transfers, and funds availability.
• LAW JD 602: Lawyering Skills 1
  Provides training in legal research, legal writing, oral advocacy, client interviewing, and client counseling through simulations of real-world legal disputes.
• LAW JD 603: Lawyering Skills 2
  Provides training in legal research, legal writing, oral advocacy, client interviewing, and client counseling through simulations of real-world legal disputes.
• LAW JD 605: Business Fundamentals
  Introduction to Business Fundamentals is an online, self-paced, asynchronous program forming a required part of the JD curriculum. The curriculum consists of modules covering business basics, corporate finance and financial accounting, including the following subjects: capital markets; the basics of financial reporting; balance sheets; income statements and cash flow; business forms and organizations; financing organizations; discounting; and calculating risk, return and valuation. Assessment is based on multiple choice exams. Students may opt-out of the course if they score an 84% or better on the pre-course exam. A score of 70% or better on the post-course exam, following successful completion of the course, is necessary to meet the requirement. GRADING NOTICE: This course awards no credits and is graded P/F. It is a graduation requirement for JD students. Students may enroll in the program for the fall, spring or summer semesters, but should complete the course by the conclusion of the fall semester of the 3L year.
• LAW JD 607: Lawyering Lab
  Lawyering Lab is an intensive, four-day course required of all first-year law students. Lawyering Lab provides hands-on, practical training in the context of a business deal, giving students the opportunity to practice a variety of skills under conditions that simulate the realities of day-to-day practice, including time constraints. These skills include negotiation, client counseling, problem-solving, professionalism, public presentation, and teamwork. Students also have an opportunity for self-reflection and evaluation. Students are grouped into small teams and assigned to represent a client on either side of a transaction. Under faculty supervision, teams on both sides of the transaction identify the legal constraints and opportunities presented. Students then collaborate with their teammates to identify, assess, and recommend options for action to their client. After counseling their client on a course of action, students negotiate and draft contractual provisions with opposing counsel. The deadlines for class assignments are tight, as they usually are for lawyers seeking to respond with immediacy to particular client problems. Through the expertise and guidance of the instructors, collaborative exercises with peers, and exposure to some of the day-to-day elements of lawyering, students in the Lawyering Lab learn about law and legal practice in a way that is exciting, innovative, and participant-centered. 1 credit, P/F.
• LAW JD 608: Legal Analysis
  Legal Analysis is a skills-development course focused on the analytical, test-taking, writing, and study skills that are critical to students' success on the bar exam and in the practice of law. The course consists of an intensive substantive and analytical review of numerous writing and practice assignments, utilizing bar tested materials from Kaplan. Course enrollment is limited to 20 students per section who will be selected based on an application process in June 2020. In-class final exam. THIS CLASS IS RESTRICTED to 3L students who have formally applied to and been accepted by Nick Horan. GRADING NOTICE: This class will not offer the CR/NC/H option. Meeting dates -- 2/20/2020-4/16/2020.
• LAW JD 675: Islamic Law (S)
  This course introduces students to the sources, jurisprudential methodology, doctrines, actors and institutions, and operation of Islamic law from classical to modern times. Readings include primary sources--foundational texts, fatwas (legal opinions), case reports, and constitutional and statutory provisions--along with secondary sources that discuss the history and evolution of Islamic law, theories of Islamic legal interpretation, competing views of the meaning and application of Islamic law, and variations in the role Islamic law plays in the legal systems of today's Muslim-majority countries. Specific topics to be covered include: the roots of the law and the derivation of legal rules from those roots; the respective roles of scholars, judges, executive officials and other actors in determining and enforcing rules of Islamic law; judicial procedure and rules of evidence; reform and the reception of Western law in the 19th and 20th centuries; democracy, constitutionalism, and contemporary theories and forms of "Islamic" states; and Islamic law in the U.S. and other "non-Muslim" lands. Cases in criminal law, family law, Islamic finance, and other fields will provide opportunities for in-depth discussions of substantive Islamic law, and regular reference to both the common-law tradition and the modern American legal system will offer comparative perspectives. No background in Islamic studies is required. Grades will be based on a seminar paper and class participation. LIMITED WRITING REQUIREMENT OPTION: A limited number of students may be permitted to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement with the approval of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. ** A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar, or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, will be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who wait list for a seminar are required to attend the first seminar meeting to be considered for enrollment.
• LAW JD 678: Scientific Controversies in Environmental Law (S)
  This seminar examines the state of knowledge in environmental law, and how regulators, litigants, and social movements bridge and fill knowledge gaps that were identified at the dawn of modern environmental law in statutes such as the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Environmental law begins with a plea: that agencies and other parties consider, limit, and mitigate the impacts of their actions. However, those impacts feature system effects, nonlinear interactions, feedback loops, discontinuous and threshold dynamics, and uncertain boundaries. The administrative state has at times crude or partial means to address these impacts. It relies on artificial constructs to respond to environmental impacts, such as worst-case scenarios, reasonable foreseeability, "best available" science in regulatory practice, notions of validity and reliability in federal rules of evidence, scales of spatial and temporal analysis that are inappropriately narrow or large and vague, and tools such as standards and allowances that rely on proxies or other approximations of the experience of pollution and its effects on human beings and landscapes. We will explore available tools and proposed reforms through topics such as environmental impact assessment, risk assessment, health impact assessment, scientific evidence, cumulative impact, socio-economic impact, environmental monitoring, disparate impact, community-scale impact, and ecological impact. Course requirements include a final paper, a class presentation based on the paper, in-class exercises, and class participation. PREREQUISITE: NONE. GRADING NOTICE: This class will not offer the CR/NC/H option. **A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar, or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, may be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who are on a wait list for a seminar are required to attend the first seminar meeting to be considered for enrollment.
• LAW JD 679: Creative & Innovative Economies (S)
  This IP seminar studies the complicated relationship of access and ownership in the development and sustainability of IP-rich communities in the internet age. Students read intensely for the first half of the semester about particular creative and innovative communities and their IP practices, e.g., video game developers, graffiti artists, biomedical engineers, photographers, comedians. In this first part of the course, students write response papers and discuss the material. They will also begin formulating a plan for the second half of the semester, in which they will choose their own a creative or innovative community to study in depth. The second half of the semester supports the student in that research project, identifying the community, gaining access to evidence about that community, analyzing the evidence, and developing legal analysis of intellectual property issues for that community. We workshop the individual projects as a group, read proposals together, and continue with our reading on intellectual property issues that relate to the chosen projects. The final project is a combination of (1) facts/evidence about the community, (2) a written analysis of the facts, (3) legal proposals to aid the achievement of its goals as a creative or innovative community, and (4) a short presentation to the class of the findings/analysis. PREREQUISITE: Intellectual Property (survey course) or a combination of two of the individual IP courses: Copyright, Trademark and Patent Law. GRADING NOTICE: This course does not offer the CR/NC/H option. ** A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar (designated by an (S) in the title), or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, may be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who are on a wait list for a seminar are required to attend the first seminar meeting to be considered for enrollment.
• LAW JD 680: International Protection of Women's Human Rights (S)
  At the international level, there has been notable progress in the last four decades in the recognition of women's rights as human rights. Despite the recognition of equality and non-discrimination rights in core human rights documents over the last 70 years, the lived reality for the majority of women, is very different. The equal realisation of all rights, without distinction, is largely a myth for women around the world. The inclusion of a larger focus on women's human rights in teaching and learning about international law and institutions is imperative. The need for concrete knowledge on the issue and also on the social realities globally, through the proposed course, will encourage critical thinking and challenge the existing ideologies on gender and race hierarchies, on power and privilege, and also on social justice broadly. The course aims to examine the development, content and implementation of international and regional human rights laws that seek to promote and protect women's human rights -- with a particular focus on the Inter-American and African human rights systems. Additionally, the course provides a forum for students to critically analyse the theory and practice of women's human rights from the global, regional and national perspectives. LIMITED WRITING REQUIREMENT OPTION: A limited number of students may be permitted to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement. GRADING NOTICE: This course does not offer the CR/NC/H option. ** A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar, or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, may be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who are on a wait list are required to attend the first meeting to be considered for enrollment.
• LAW JD 681: Global Social Compliance (S)
  This course examines human rights due diligence in global supply chains. It begins with an overview of the organization of production in supply chains and an analysis of the different types of human rights abuses that may arise, specifically focusing on the ways that transnational business may contribute to these abuses. The course then explores different strategies that transnational businesses could adopt to prevent and address these abuses through a compliance framework that includes developing human rights policies, performing human rights assessment, integrating policy recommendations and assessment findings across company processes, tracking the effectiveness of company processes, and communicating with stakeholders about human rights impacts and adequacy of company processes for addressing these impacts. The course will compare various domestic and international governance strategies designed to promote human rights due diligence, such as the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, United Nations Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct, and draft text of a treaty on business and human rights. It will also explore shareholder activism addressing human rights due diligence in global supply chains. GRADING NOTICE: This class does not offer the CR/NC/H option. ** A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar (designated by an (S) in the title), or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, may be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who are on a wait list for a seminar are required to attend the first seminar meeting to be considered for enrollment.
• LAW JD 685: Compassionate Release Practicum (C)
  THIS CLASS IS RESTRICTED to students who have formally applied and been accepted to the Compassionate Release Practicum. In April of 2018, Massachusetts joined 44 states and the federal government in providing a statutory mechanism by which terminally ill and/or permanently incapacitated inmates could be released on so-called medical parole. The new statute was a result of ongoing compromises as part of the omnibus criminal justice reform bill, and pending constitutional litigation which became moot. To date only one person has been released. The intent of the practicum is to engage students both in direct representation of inmates not otherwise entitled to counsel, and in brainstorming and developing solutions in this new and rapidly developing area of law. Students will learn about legislative history and lobbying, about statutory construction, FOIA, and about the constitutional underpinnings of compassionate release. Students will learn and demonstrate drafting, client counseling and negotiation skills. This practicum can be taken for one (50 hours) or two (100 hours) graded credits. Students will write a total of twenty pages, which likely will include a petition for release, and a superior court complaint and motion for judgment on the pleadings. Students will in addition write two journal reflections. There will be a weekly one hour seminar at a time arranged with the students. The final grade is based on class participation, revised writing and journal reflections. NOTE: The Compassionate Release Practicum counts towards the 6 credit Experiential Learning requirement. GRADING NOTICE: This course does not offer the CR/NC/H option.
• LAW JD 686: International Finance
  This course focuses on how policy, law and regulation affect international finance. It examines cross-border banking and securities transactions in four major markets, the United States, the European Union, Japan and China. In the U.S. the focus is on the impact and response to the financial crisis of 2007- 2009 and how banking and capital market regulation affects foreign firms. In the E.U. the focus is on continuing efforts to build integrated financial markets as well as deal with Brexit, in Japan on rebuilding the Japanese financial system after the "lost decade," and now stimulating the capital market, and in China how foreign firms and investors are able to access the Chinese markets. The course also looks at the infrastructure that underlies the global financial system, e.g. the Basel Capital Accord (as well as national additions), global standards for the clearing and settlement of securities, and rules for different exchange rate regimes. In addition, the course deals with certain important transactions like derivatives and various funds (mutual, hedge and private equity). The course also cover some key aspects of the emerging markets, principally the issuance and restructuring of sovereign debt. The basic text for the course is H. Scott and A. Gelpern, International Finance (22nd ed. 2018).
• LAW JD 698: Small & Mid-Size Firm Externship: Seminar
  This CLASS IS RESTRICTED to students who have received permission from the Clinical and Experiential Programs Office to enroll. This is a 2-credit graded seminar that meets every week for 1.5 hours for those students doing fieldwork in small and medium-sized law offices. This seminar focuses on a range of topics unique to legal practice in small and medium-sized law firms, with a particular emphasis on developing the skills necessary for successful lawyering in this setting. Students will gain a foundational knowledge of smaller firms and learn how to cultivate mentors, seek and respond to feedback, obtain challenging assignments, and measure progress on professional development goals. Students will write reflective papers, make oral presentations, and complete other work as required by the instructor. NOTE: Students who enroll in this externship may count the credits towards the 6 credit Experiential Learning requirement. COREQUISITE: Small & Mid-Size Firm Externship: Fieldwork (JD 699).
• LAW JD 699: Small & Mid-Size Firm Externship: Fieldwork
  This CLASS IS RESTRICTED to students who have received permission from the Clinical and Experiential Programs Office to enroll. This is the companion fieldwork component for students enrolled in the Small and Medium Law Firm Externship: Seminar. Students will work at legal offices of small and medium-sized law firms. Students will receive 3-9 variable P/F credits for working at their placements. Each credit requires 50 hours of work over the course of the 13- week semester (averaging 4 hours per week). NOTE: Students who enroll in this externship may count the credits towards the 6 credit Experiential Learning requirement. COREQUISITE: Small & Mid-Size Firm Externship: Seminar (JD 698).

Back to full list of School of Law