Learning Outcomes for Degree Programs & Concentrations
Learning Outcomes for Degree Programs
JD Degree
- Students will possess knowledge and understanding of substantive and procedural law;
- Students will possess the ability to perform:
a) legal analysis and reasoning
b) legal research
c) problem solving
d) written communication in the legal context
e) oral communication in the legal context - Students will understand the exercise of proper professional and ethical responsibilities to clients and the legal system; and
- Students will demonstrate the professional skills of collaboration, counseling and negotiation needed for competent and ethical participation as a member of the legal profession. All students will also demonstrate a basic understanding of business fundamentals and be able to read and understand basic financial documents.
LLM Degree in American Law
- Students will demonstrate a basic understanding of the US legal system;
- Students will demonstrate an ability to use legal authority and perform legal analysis; and
- Student will demonstrate proficiency in Legal English, in both written and oral communications.
LLM Degree in Banking & Financial Law
- Students will demonstrate a deeper understanding of US financial services law and regulation and of certain widely adopted international financial law standards.
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the approach of US practitioners to financial services law issues, including structuring and documenting certain kinds of financial transactions.
LLM Degree in Intellectual Property Law
- Internationally trained students shall:
a) Demonstrate a basic understanding of the US legal system;
b) Demonstrate an understanding of the core doctrines of intellectual property law;
c) Demonstrate an ability to use legal authority and perform legal analysis; and
d) Demonstrate proficiency in Legal English in both written and oral communications.2. Domestically trained students shall:
a) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the core doctrines of intellectual property law.
LLM Degree in Taxation
- Students will demonstrate a foundational understanding of the U.S. tax system, law, and procedures.
Master in the Study of Tax Law (MSL-TAX)
- Students will demonstrate a foundational understanding of the U.S. tax system, law, and procedures; and
- Students will demonstrate skills in tax research and draftsmanship.
Learning Outcomes for Two-Year Programs
Two-Year LLM Program in American Law
Students will:
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of the US legal system.
- Demonstrate an ability to use legal authority and perform legal analysis.
- Demonstrate proficiency in legal English, in both written and oral communications.
Two-Year LLM Program in Intellectual Property & Information Law
Students will:
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of the US legal system.
- Demonstrate an ability to use legal authority and perform legal analysis.
- Demonstrate proficiency in legal English, in both written and oral communications.
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the core doctrines of intellectual property and information law.
Two-Year LLM Program in Banking and Financial Law
Students will:
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of the US legal system.
- Demonstrate an ability to use legal authority and perform legal analysis.
- Demonstrate proficiency in legal English, in both written and oral communications.
- Demonstrate a deeper understanding of the structure, regulation, and functioning of the US banking sector and of certain widely applicable international financial law standards.
- Demonstrate an understanding of the standards and approach of US public and private practitioners to financial services law issues, including reviewing, structuring, documenting, and completing widely utilized forms of financial transactions.
Two-Year LLM Program in Tax Law and for Two-Year Master in the Study of Tax Law Program
Students will:
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of the US legal system.
- Demonstrate an ability to use legal authority and perform legal analysis.
- Demonstrate proficiency in legal English, in both written and oral communications.
- Demonstrate a foundational understanding of the U.S. tax system, law, and procedures.
Learning Outcomes for Certificate Programs
Certificate in Financial Services Compliance
- Students will be able to identify and describe the structural components, operational elements and analytical framework for a compliance function of a major financial institution.
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the legal and regulatory framework for US financial institutions and the regulatory expectations for a robust compliance function at such institutions.
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the necessary professional skills of a financial institution compliance officer, including analytical skills, project management, use of data and risk sensitivity.
Estate Planning Certificate
- Students will demonstrate detailed knowledge of the substantive case law, statutory rules, and regulatory guidance with respect to the tax aspects of Estate Planning;
- Students will demonstrate a fundamental understanding of the relevant considerations involved in drafting an estate plan.
Learning Outcomes for Concentrations
Transactional Practice Concentration
- Students will demonstrate competent knowledge and understanding of substantive and, to the extent applicable, procedural law related to corporations and other business entities and one or more specific practice or specialty areas generally relevant to transactional practice;
- Students will be capable of performing legal analysis and reasoning in the areas referred to in 1 immediately above;
- Students will demonstrate a basic understanding of business fundamentals and the ability to read and understand basic financial documents;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to perform legal analysis and reasoning, problem solving, and written and oral communication in the legal context, in particular through contractual analysis and drafting to resolve problems posed by clients with differing business concerns and objectives; and
- Students will demonstrate in simulations one or more of the professional skills of negotiation, collaboration and counseling, in particular through (a) negotiating and drafting contract terms, (b) organizing and completing group assignments, including allocating responsibility, compiling a completed work product and meeting deadlines and (c) interviewing, and making presentations to, clients.
Health Law Concentration
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the substantive and procedural law related to health care, across multiple domains, tracking the Model Curriculum Guidance created by the American Health Lawyers Association;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to compose a substantial written work on health law, generally through a certification paper in a health law topic supervised by a health law professor;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to apply substantive health law in experiential settings, such as classroom simulations and field placements (externships); and
- Students will function effectively in an integrative capstone experience in health law.
Litigation & Dispute Resolution Concentration
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the substantive and procedural law related to litigation and dispute resolution, including the rules of evidence, oral and written advocacy;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to properly apply the accepted standards of professional and ethical responsibility;
- Students will be capable of applying the skills of problem solving, collaboration, counseling and negotiation in the litigation context;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to compose a substantial written work on a litigation or dispute resolution topic; generally through a certification paper supervised by a professor who teaches within the concentration, with iterative feedback and improvement over multiple drafts;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to analyze and critique issues of professional and ethical responsibility; and competently practice the skills of problem solving, collaboration, counseling and negotiation in an experiential setting both in classroom simulations as well as in field placements (clinics and externships).
Concentration in Intellectual Property & Information
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the several federal and state legal domains for regulating intangibles and encouraging or rewarding creative/inventive effort. One or more of these domains will be federal copyright, federal trademark, or federal patent law. Students who pursue cyber issues will also demonstrate an understanding of the various empirical, normative and legal issues posed by digital technologies, such as cybersecurity, database regulation, or cyberlaw.
- Students will show competence in modes of statutory interpretation and an understanding of how to assess and deploy legislative history;
- Students will demonstrate an ability to perform legal analysis and reasoning, including the ability to formulate arguments based in legislative history, economics, normative ethics, or caselaw, and demonstrate an ability to engage in problem-solving and strategic planning for litigation;
- Students in the IP branch of the concentration will demonstrate an ability to draw across more than one subject-matter area to assess how best a client’s IP issues should be framed for purposes of litigation or transactions;
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the challenges posed by differences between the many kinds of information products, both in comparing the intangible products and their different legal domains among themselves, and/or in comparing information products or the computer environment with the ordinary physical environment and tangible products such as land or chattels;
- Students will demonstrate a basic understanding of what analogies from common-law physical property and torts might be illuminating in IP and information law, and the nature of the analogies’ various shortcomings;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to effectively prepare and deliver written and oral communication in the legal context, whether in negotiation, drafting or commenting on statutory proposals, client counseling or in litigation;
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the many ways in which rapidly changing technology can affect, and be affected by, the law, in a way that can assist clients with their planning or legislators with their proposals.
International Law Concentration
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of substantive and procedural international law, both public and private;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to compose a substantial written work in international law, generally through a certification or substantial seminar paper in a topic of international, foreign, or comparative law supervised by a professor in these respective disciplines;
- Students will demonstrate the ability to apply international law in experiential settings, either through clinical work (for example, in the international human rights law, human trafficking, or asylum clinics), classroom simulations, externships abroad or with non-governmental organizations or U.S. government agencies that deal with international law or foreign policy;
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of how international law today influences and interacts with domestic (U.S.) law in a diversity of substantive areas.
Risk Management & Compliance Concentration
A student who completes the Risk Management & Compliance Concentration will:
- demonstrate an understanding of how to conceptualize, identify and quantify business risk;
- demonstrate an awareness of issues raised in the practice of international and U.S. business law and their relationship to business risk;
- demonstrate an understanding of the major laws, regulations, and cases that constitute the current U.S. and international compliance legal framework;
- demonstrate knowledge of the potential consequences of non-compliance with relevant U.S. and international laws;
- demonstrate an understanding of the nature and role of effective compliance officers in their specific industry;
- demonstrate the ability to create, implement, and improve in-house compliance and ethics programs and procedures;
- demonstrate knowledge of common strategies and best practices used to ameliorate risk, ensure business continuity, and ensure legal compliance with applicable U.S. and international laws.
Public Interest
- Students will demonstrate the ability to analyze and apply the substantive and procedural law in connection with an area of law associated with public interest law.
- Students will demonstrate proficiency in lawyering skills, including advocacy, problem solving, interviewing, counseling, negotiation, collaboration, and other skills through experiential and simulation-based seminars and courses. Students also will demonstrate the ability to understand a client’s cultural difference(s) and attempt to comprehend a client’s worldview(s).
- Students will demonstrate the ability to critically analyze a legal problem in the public interest by composing substantial written work under faculty supervision through a seminar, certification paper, note or independent study.
- Students will demonstrate understanding of institutional barriers to justice and issues of difference, membership, and engagement.
- Students will demonstrate the ability to identify, analyze, and develop strategies to address problems in the public interest including those that cause inequity as to rights, privileges and opportunities.
- Students will develop effective strategies for persuasion and communication on issues of social justice and law reform.
To learn more about Program Learning Outcomes Assessment at Boston University, please visit the BU Provost’s website.