Curriculum Requirements

In addition to the graduation requirements described in the Academic Rules section of this Catalog, students are required to pass all first year and upper division required courses as listed below. J.D. students shall have priority enrollment in any course required for the J.D. degree, needed for bar examination preparation, or required for bar admission.

JD Students matriculating in fall 2020 or later are required to earn a minimum of 86 credits and satisfy the requirements below.

Students matriculating in 2016-2021 with a cumulative grade point average under 2.8 and/or students in the bottom quartile of the class at the end of a student’s second academic semester will be required to complete curricula and/or academic support programming. Students matriculating in fall 2022 or later with a cumulative grade point average under 3.0 and/or students in the bottom quartile of the class at the end of a student’s second academic semester will be required to complete curricula and/or academic support programming.

• Completion of Career Development Employment Survey (questions about this should be directed to the Office of Career and Professional Development)
• If a student received Title IV student loans (Direct Student loan, or Federal Stafford, Federal Unsubsidized Stafford, and/or Federal SLS programs), the student must complete on-line financial aid exit counseling (questions about this should be directed to the Office of Financial Aid)
• Completion of Perkins Loan Exit Interview, if applicable (questions about this should be directed to the Student Accounts Office)

Six total hours of extracurricular Professional Legal Perspectives Programming. Of the six total hours required before graduation, at least four hours must be completed during the student’s first and second year (questions about this should be directed to the Office of Culture and Inclusion)

• Field placements (including externships but not clinics with a substantial classroom component)
• Moot court or other competitions
• Publications
• Independent studies, including the Independent Long Paper, Internships with Faculty, and Independent Clinics
• Dual-degree (graduate school) courses
• Teaching Assistant courses, including Learning Community Leader credits
• Any course for credit that is substantially based upon time expended outside a regularly scheduled class at MHSL or another ABA-accredited law school

No more than 43 credits may be earned toward the J.D. degree through courses that are designated “distance education courses.” A distance education course is one in which students are separated from the faculty member or each other for more than one-third of the instruction and the instruction involves the use of technology to support regular and substantive interaction among students and between the students and the faculty member, either synchronously or asynchronously. Source: ABA Standard 306 (a). Courses that were converted to a remote format for the Covid emergency do not count against this limit.

All students must write an Advanced Research & Writing (“ARW”) paper as a requirement for graduation. Students are required to complete this requirement after their first year and are strongly advised to complete it before their final semester. Students are encouraged to complete this requirement through a seminar or other long-paper course.

The ARW requirement is consistent with American Bar Association accreditation standard 303, which requires a “rigorous writing experience” after the first year. It is designed to reflect two key aspects of the practice of law identified in the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Responsibility. First, a lawyer is a counselor who is expected to “exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice.”[1] Second, a lawyer “is a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.”[2]

The ARW paper furthers five competencies essential to law practice:

1. Legal research;
2. Fact investigation;
3. Writing, including organization, grammar, and style;
4. Strong personal work ethic and time management; and
5. Creative problem-solving

Although many ARW papers will take the form of a law review-style essay, other kinds of writing may also satisfy the requirement. In each case, the focus is on using the competencies identified above to identify and solve a problem of the sort confronted by lawyers. Description and regurgitation are not enough.

ARW papers are usually written under the supervision of a full-time faculty member. Supervision by an adjunct faculty member is permitted only if the paper is completed as part of an ARW-designated course taught by that adjunct faculty member, or, in rare circumstances, if the paper is completed as part of an Independent Research Project.

Some courses are designated by the Curriculum Committee as satisfying the ARW requirement. Because of the intensive work required between class sessions, three-credit ARW courses meet for a minimum of 110 instructional minutes per week during a thirteen-week semester or an equivalent amount of time spread over a different period. Students who wish to take the course without fulfilling the ARW requirement and students who have fulfilled the ARW requirement and choose not to write an additional long paper in the course will register for two credits, rather than three.

A student who wishes to change the number of registered credits for an ARW-designated course (i.e., from two to three or from three to two) must follow the course add/drop procedures outlined in Academic Rule 1.07 (/catalog/1-07-registration-add-drop-withdraw-extensions/) in this Catalog. In any event, a student who does not write a long paper in an ARW-designated course will not receive three credits for the course.

Papers written for law review or journal articles require the advance permission of the journal’s Editorial Board, in addition to approval of a supervising professor. Such a paper receives the credit normally associated with journal service.

Although students are encouraged to complete their ARW requirement through a seminar or other long-paper course, students may satisfy their ARW requirement by writing an independent long paper. The independent long paper option is permitted only in limited circumstances. The student must first complete and submit the Independent Long Paper Petition and obtain approval from a supervising faculty member.

Students must be in good academic standing and in their final two semesters to be registered for an independent long paper.

Independent long papers are graded A-F and earn two credits. Students may request a waiver from the Vice Dean, Academics for an independent long paper for fewer than two credits, but not more. The requirements to fulfill the ARW requirement remain the same regardless of the credits proposed. Students may not earn credits through independent research while completing their long paper requirement.

The petition must include the following:

1. why the ARW requirement cannot be satisfied through a seminar or other long-paper course (i.e. why is an independent long paper necessary);
2. a description of the topic;
3. the reason for interest in the topic;
4. the extent and type of research anticipated;
5. previous work completed in the subject area;
6. identification of a subject matter expert with whom the student will consult (which could be a faculty member); and
7. a description of the written product that will be produced.

If approved, the independent long paper must meet all other ARW requirements set forth in this section.

In addition, students completing their ARW requirement through an independent long paper will be required to complete online modules on useful topics for satisfying the requirement, such as research and topic selection, as assigned by their faculty supervisor.

Regardless of form or genre, ARW papers shall ordinarily be at least 8,500 words including footnotes. This requirement is meant to ensure that the project is substantial enough to measure and develop the five competencies identified above and to provide a summative writing experience for the student. Beyond the length requirement, formats will vary according to context and should be appropriate to the genre of the writing project. So, for example, essays should generally adhere to law review style conventions, while briefs must adhere to good citation practices and the relevant jurisdiction’s filing rules. Prior to the first draft, the student and supervising faculty shall identify the appropriate format for the paper.