Law

This course explores the foundation of transformative justice through a lens of holistic defense.

In this short course, students will examine the role of a special counsel investigating a president.

This course explores the process of judicial decision-making and how lawyers influence those decisions, and how law clerks aid in the process, with a focus on analytical, writing, and communication skills that aid in the process.

We will explore how to advise boards of directors, and private equity firms, when their companies face capital structure challenges.

This short course will explore pressing issues in AI governance, the underlying perspectives and motivations of the different players in AI governance debates around the world, and areas where legislative and regulatory activity is most active.

Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions of private companies is very different from public company transactions. This course explores the structuring and negotiating of private deals by strategic (another company) and financial (private equity) purchasers through detailed discussion of and exercises focused on actual transactions.

This short course focuses on public equity investing and related company analysis. The course is designed to give students a practical understanding of how professional equity investors at large investment firms analyze companies and make investment decisions.

This course focuses on the common economic problems, such as moral hazard, information asymmetry, and rent-seeking, that drive deal structuring and deal contracting. Students will apply economic tools, such as alternative contractual regimes, transaction costs, and risk-sharing to evaluate and solve economic problems in a variety of real-world deals.

This course examines print and electronic research. Topics include basic primary and secondary sources, including legislative history and administrative law; using Lexis and Westlaw; research in specialized areas and transnational law; business and social science resources; the role of the Internet in legal research; and nontraditional approaches to finding legal information.

This course focuses on the corporate and securities law issues relevant to mergers and acquisitions, including the Williams Act; state statutory and case law; as well as important forms of private ordering such as poison pills, lockups, earnouts, and the allocation of risks by the acquisition agreement. Relevant accounting and tax issues will be covered as well.

This course will examine the basic principles in the application of the federal income tax to partnerships and their partners. Due to recent changes in the law, an increasing number of private firms, whether or not organized as partnerships, will be subject to these rules in the future. The course is taught by using problems that illustrate the principles discussed in class.

The course will examine the federal statutes and regulations relating to the sale of securities and the duties of issuers, underwriters, brokers, dealers, officers, directors, and other market participants. Topics will include the regulation of public and private offerings, trading markets, accounting standards, the lawyer's role in verifying financial information, and the use of finance theory in securities litigation.

The course will cover intestate succession; requirements for the execution, revocation, republication, and revival of wills and codicils; probate procedure and grounds for will contests; requisites for the creation and termination of private trusts; inter vivos transactions that serve as will substitutes; planning for incapacity; and problems in the interpretation of wills.

This course will provide an in-depth look at the case law and theory of the Equal Protection Clause.

In this course, students will learn in detail the rules and procedures associated with taking depositions in federal litigation. This is a hands-on, practical problem simulation course.

This yearlong clinical course provides students the opportunity to brief and argue one or more appeals before a federal appeals court. The rules and procedures applicable in the federal appellate system will be examined. Fundamentals of oral and written appellate advocacy will be discussed, with a focus on each student's individual work project.

This is the first semester of a yearlong clinic. Students may represent children with legal issues in the areas of education law, laws governing access to services for incarcerated children, mental health and developmental disabilities law, and foster care and social services law. Students will be given an opportunity to work on policy issues.

The semester-long Criminal Defense Clinic provides a first-hand, experience-based study of the processes, techniques, strategy, and responsibilities of legal representation at the trial level.

This is the first semester of a yearlong clinic designed to give students first-hand experience in the practice of employment law, from both the plaintiff and defense side.

There is currently a groundswell for criminal justice reform. At the same time, much is being written about the lack of hard facts and reliable data to inform these changes. This is the first half course of a year-long clinic that aims to step into that void and take on collaborative projects to produce those hard facts and reliable data for all types of organizations in the criminal justice reform movement needing that information.

This is the first semester of a yearlong clinic where students develop trial skills using housing law as the substantive background, and eligible students appear and argue in local courts.

This clinic involves instruction and practical training in patent drafting as well as the negotiation and drafting of patent and software license agreements. Topics include the evaluation of inventions and computer software; preparation, filing and prosecution of patent applications; dealing with patent examiners; and researching intellectual property issues and technology transfer.

This is the first semester of a yearlong clinic in which students explore a range of practical, ethical, and intellectual issues involved in the discharge of a prosecutor's duties and responsibilities including discovery and exculpatory evidence, duty not to prosecute on less than probable cause, cross-warrant situations, prosecution of multiple defendants and joint trial, witness recantation and preparation, and improper argument at trial.

This is the first semester of a yearlong clinic introducing students to all aspects of current U.S. Supreme Court practice through live cases. Working on teams, students will handle actual cases from the seeking of Supreme Court review to briefing on the merits.

This is the first semester of a yearlong clinic to investigate three potential wrongful convictions of incarcerated individuals in the state of Virginia. One case will have forensic evidence (usually DNA) that could potentially be tested, and two will be non-DNA cases. Student will interview potential clients and witnesses, review case files, collect records, search court files and more.