Designed to help students develop the analytical skills necessary for success in law school and on the bar exam. Students will strengthen their core analytical skills, written communication skills, and ability to retain information. The ability to engage legal questions at the highest level is a skill that can be practiced and improved. Requisites: Restricted to Professional Year 1 Law students only.
Provides an intensive introduction to the resources available for legal research. Students also prepare written material of various kinds designed to develop research skills, legal writing style, and analysis of legal problems. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Moves students from the brief introduction to legal research offered in the first-year legal writing classes to the sort of problem-centered research students will perform starting in the summer after their first year. Provides students with a conceptual understanding of the organization and connectivity of legal authority and with instruction in research methodology at both the project and resource levels. Requisites: Restricted to Professional Year 1 Law students only.
Exposes students to the process of drafting and amending enacted legal texts such as statutes, regulations, and polities of both governmental and non-governmental entities. Students will critically examine lawyers' roles as counselors, advocates and experts in different legislative and policy-drafting contexts.
Examines the intersection of civil procedure and legal writing. Emphasizes the drafting of persuasive adversarial litigation documents, including complaints, answers, motions in limine, motions to dismiss, motions of summary judgment, and jury instructions. Intensive writing and workshop format.
Focus on developing in students the research, writing and analytical skills necessary to operate within any highly regulated field. Students will work broadly on research and writing skills required in a regulatory practice and narrowly on how that applies to particular areas of expertise, to gain an understanding of a particular area of the law. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Builds on skills learned in the first-year legal writing course to improve written legal analysis. Students will complete multiple written assignments and will receive individual feedback on their work. Sections vary significantly depending on the professor; please check the Legal Writing page of the Colorado Law website to read each professor's course description. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Places contemporary American judicial opinion in historical and comparative context. Analyzes individual and institutional writing choices that authors of judicial opinions must make and ethical dilemmas they must confront. Builds upon the first-year legal-writing curriculum. Challenges students to develop and defend their own opinion-writing approaches and styles as well as to write from approaches and in styles that are not their own.
Requires substantial writing and reading. Begins with participants bringing to class a piece of creative writing consisting of three to five thousand words.Each session consists of one hour of discussion and critique of an assigned writing exercise that everyone has prepared for the class, and one hour of workshop critique of each participant's longer work, in turn.
Builds upon first-year legal research problem solving skills by exposing students to the nuances of research topics in a specialized topic and tracking related doctrinal classes, e.g., environmental and natural resources law.
Offers an in-depth look at research resources and methods. Includes sources from the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of federal and state government; research in topical areas such as environmental law, taxation, and international law; and extensive coverage of secondary and nonlaw resources. Covers both print and electronic sources. Students will have several assignments and a final project.
Surveys resources and methods to effectively research Colorado law. Covers primary and secondary resources including Colorado statutes, cases and digests, regulations, and constitution and practice materials. Covers how to research Colorado municipal law and other Colorado topics. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Approaches legal research from a practice-focused perspective using hands-on sessions in the library. Instructs: how to find and use resources specific to a particular practice area; how to evaluate and weigh strengths and weaknesses of the various legal resources available; and, how to use legal resources efficiently. Includes research strategies and methods, primary and secondary resources, and research using library catalogs and Westlaw, Lexis, and other vendors. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Develops students' ability to think critically about and solve current legal problems. Evaluates the benefits and detriments of both print and on-line legal resources, and how to create an efficient research plan. Formulates and applies research strategies to real-world legal problems, and uses legal analysis to refine and improve research results. Note: students who have taken LAWS 6856 Advanced Legal Research course may not enroll in this course. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Advances and improves legal research and writing skills learned in first year. Proposes variety of assignment types across substantive and procedural areas to prepare for experiences as summer associates or new attorneys. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Involves independent study and preparation of a research paper under faculty supervision. Students produce a research paper equivalent to a seminar research paper. a draft is submitted, subjected to critique by the faculty member, and redrafted. Available during or after the fifth semester of law school. Instructor consent required. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Gives students the opportunity to participate in the research, writing, and editing activities involved in publishing the University of Colorado Law Review. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Gives students the opportunity to participate in the research, writing, and editing activities involved in publishing the University of Colorado Law Review. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Gives students the opportunity to participate in the research, writing, and editing activities involved in publishing the Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Gives students the opportunity to participate in the research, writing, and editing activities involved in publishing the Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Gives students the opportunity to participate in the research, writing, and editing activities involved in publishing the Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Gives students the opportunity to participate in the research, writing, and editing activities involved in publishing the Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
Focuses on the question of what literature can teach lawyers through a variety of literary works and films. Covers traditional works by Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Camus, Kafka, and Melville, as well as more contemporary works by Toni Morrison and Norman Mailer. Several short reflection papers, a journal, and a final paper will be required.
Develops the tools students will need to thrive in the law school's MSL program. Deepens students' understanding of the United States legal system and develops their ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in writing and orally to their intended audience, and research, organize and explain their ideas clearly, using appropriate writing conventions. Requisites: Restricted to Master of Studies in Law (LAWS-MSL) students only.
LLM students study academic legal writing in this 1-credit per semester yearlong course. Topics covered will include: the purpose of academic legal writing; how academic legal writing differs from other forms of legal writing; topic selection; legal research (methods and ethics); first drafts; editing; academic workshops; and publishing. In addition, guest speakers will talk to LLM students about career planning and job seeking. International LLM students will learn about the American legal system. Requisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.
