Univ. of Hawai`i Law School: 1st Year Curriculum

The purposes of the first-year curriculum are to do the following:

1. Introduce students to the experience of performing lawyers' work-its various contexts, objectives, methods, and difficulties;

2. Develop minimal competence in the analysis of legal problems, in certain forms of oral and written communication, in dealing with people, and in recognizing questions of professional ethics;

3. Instill the habit of approaching legal problems with full reference to the contexts in which they arise;

4. Help students begin to appreciate the relevance and importance of other disciplines;

5. Develop a student's working knowledge of the verbal content, rhetorical structures, underlying policies, and operational meaning of several important areas of law; and,

6. Help students understand the legal profession, its problems, its needs, and its future direction.

The core of the first-semester curriculum is Legal Practice. It immediately engages students to use their knowledge, analytical techniques, and perceptive powers to serve simulated clients. Thus the seminar's subject matter is legal practice, and its pedagogical method is learning by doing. In addition to its separate education functions, the seminar provides a unique experience in a small class with highly experienced faculty members. Faculty act as supervising attorneys who engage students in individual and group conversations about a range of legal subjects, methods, documents, and conventions. Students work immediately in the law library, researching all assignments as they learn how to balance print sources with electronic ones, traditional texts with modern ones. Students develop sophisticated techniques for formulating issues, creating research strategies, taking notes, designing analyses, writing and rewriting documents, and speaking with experts. Classes cover legal processes and products, including a range of U.S. analytical patterns, research choices and ethics, and common conventions.

The entire first-year curriculum consists of required courses and seminars. In the first year, every student must take the following courses: