Requirements

Introduction

“Skills and values of the competent lawyer are developed along a continuum that starts before law school, reaches its most formative and intensive stage during the law school experience and continues throughout a lawyer's professional career.” Legal Education and Professional Development - An Educational Continuum, Report of the ABA Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap, p. 3, (1992)

The University of Baltimore School of Law offers full-time day, part-time day and part-time evening programs. Eighty seven credits are needed to graduate (effective beginning with December 2009 graduates). Forty credits must be taken in required courses. Students are admitted to the entering class in the fall semester. Full-time students must enroll in 13 to 16 credit hours per semester. Part-time students must enroll in 8 to 12 credit hours per semester. Classes meet for 14 weeks per term followed by a two-week examination period. Students must earn their J.D. degree within 7 years after matriculation.

The School of Law offers an innovative curriculum designed to better prepare its students for the transition from law school to the practice of law. This goal is furthered in the first year (first and second year for evening students) by a range of traditional substantive and skills courses with special emphasis on analysis, writing, research and advocacy skills. In the second and third years (third and fourth years for evening students), a student may combine other traditional substantive courses with courses required for recognition of a concentration in a particular area of the law. The option to earn recognition as having concentrated in a particular area of the law will involve the student in a sequence of courses of increasing depth, and assist the student in developing more complex professional skills. It is not intended to make the student a “specialist” in specific areas, but to give students the option of a program that progresses to more advanced courses and provides them with skills and drafting experience in an area of particular interest to them.

All students, whether or not they decide to obtain recognition for an area of concentration, are required to complete the following courses during their upper-class years: Evidence, Professional Responsibility, Constitutional Law II, an advocacy course, a Law in Context course, and two legal writing requirements. Of the eighty seven (effective beginning with December 2009 graduates) credits required for the J.D. degree, forty must be taken in specifically required courses.