University of Oregon School of Law

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Skills Requirement

During the second or third year of law school, each student must satisfactorily complete at least one course with a substantial professional skills component to qualify for graduation. Professional skills include trial and appellate advocacy, alternative methods of dispute resolution, counseling, interviewing, negotiating, and drafting. Scholarly research and writing do not qualify as professional skills for purposes of fulfilling this requirement.

A course qualifies as meeting this requirement if the class provides:

An updated list of courses that satisfy this requirement will be maintained by the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, will be reviewed each year and revised as necessary by the Curriculum Committee, and will be available to students at the time of registration in the spring. Courses not on the list may qualify, with approval of the instructor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

A class may be listed as meeting both the Writing Requirement and the Skills Requirement. A student taking such a class may use the course to qualify for only one of these two requirements.

Not all courses are offered every year.

The following courses satisfy the Skills requirement:

Clinics and Externships

Advanced Civil Practice Clinic: Builds on the basic Civil Practice Clinic. Students are involved in more complex cases and projects requiring oral and written advocacy.

Advanced Domestic Violence Clinic: Builds on the basic Domestic Violence Clinic. Participants represent victims of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault in a variety of more complex legal actions, including dissolution and child custody actions.

Advanced Environmental Law Clinic: Students develop complex cases, research and write in greater depth about those cases, and assume more responsibility for case management and direction.

Advanced Prosecution Clinic: Students are involved in litigation, from simple to complicated. They try at least five jury trials during a semester, prepare felony trials, respond to and argue circuit court motions, and assist felony trial lawyers with circuit court cases. Placement for students in this clinic is in the Lane County District Attorney's Office.

Business Law and Entrepreneurship Externship: Prepares students to represent entrepreneurs and to be entrepreneurs, to direct faculty research toward legal and economic problems that confront entrepreneurs, and to make a lasting contribution to the economic development of Oregon.

Civil Practice Clinic: Each semester, no more than twelve third-year law students under the supervision of an attorney provide assistance to low-income people eligible for legal services from the Lane County Legal Aid Office. Students perform the necessary interviewing, investigation, research, case strategy development, drafting, and trial preparation work for their clients. Clinic members occasionally handle court or administrative hearings.

Criminal Defense Clinic: The semester-long or year-long format of this clinic ensures that each participant represents approximately ten clients and presents the defense in at least one jury trial. Participants also conduct client and witness interviews, investigations, pretrial motions, suppression hearings, plea negotiations, and sentencing hearings for the defense. Each participant is expected to spend an average of six to eight hours per week on clinic cases.

Criminal Prosecution Clinic: Students are assigned to one of several local prosecutors' offices, where they prepare and try minor criminal cases under the supervision of an attorney. Students may assist senior prosecutors on felony cases. The classroom component consists of weekly two- to three-hour discussions of the roles of participants in the criminal justice system through the various stages of the criminal process.

Domestic Violence Clinic: Participants represent victims of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault in obtaining restraining orders and related relief. Students perform the necessary interviewing, investigation, research, case strategy development, drafting, and trial preparation for their clients. Students participate in contested hearings.

Environmental Law Clinic: Students learn to handle clients, find and prepare expert witnesses, pursue discovery and Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain evidence, develop innovative legal theories with clinic attorneys or with private co-counsel in cases, represent clients orally in administrative or court hearings when appropriate, submit motions to courts, and prepare winning (not merely adequate) legal briefs and memoranda.

Federal Bankruptcy Court Internship: Students serve as judicial interns for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Oregon and participate in judicial decision-making. Includes research and drafting bench memoranda and opinions, and observing oral arguments and chambers conferences.

Judicial Internship: Participants serve as interns to a federal court or state appellate court. Students may choose a one-semester, 3-credit internship supervised by a U.S. bankruptcy judge in Eugene. All judicial internships require the specific approval of the supervising judge and the law school administration as to credit and other conditions of the internship.

Mediation Clinic: Intensive, skills-oriented course that trains law students to mediate a range of cases. Skills training offers opportunities to practice communication skills and the mediation model in role-playing activities. Enhances interviewing, problem-solving and analysis, and negotiation skills. Participants discuss and practice techniques for balancing power, preserving impartiality, and maintaining ethical standards. After training is completed, students mediate small-claims cases from the Lane County District Court under the supervision of the clinic director or adjunct.

Office of the United States Trustee Permanent Externship Program: The Office of the United States Trustee is the division of the U.S. Department of Justice responsible for overseeing the administration of bankruptcy cases. In this supervisory role, the U.S. trustee ensures that bankruptcy cases proceed without delay, debtors comply with the disclosure requirements of the Bankruptcy Code, assets are distributed according to the Code's priority scheme, plans of reorganization proposed by consumer debtors comply with the Code's requirements for confirmation, and instances of fraud and abuse of the bankruptcy system are identified.

Small Business Clinic: Replicates the environment of a small law firm. Students represent small companies and entrepreneurs who need legal assistance in forming and operating their businesses. Each student assists several clients during the course of the semester under the supervision of an attorney. Includes a weekly seminar offering instruction in substantive law, ethical issues, and practical lawyering, with an emphasis on the skills required in drafting documents, interviewing and counseling clients, and representing clients in organizational and contractual matters.

Courses and Laboratories

Advanced Appellate Advocacy: Covers various topics concerning the appellate process in the federal system and addresses legal doctrines relevant to appellate litigation before the United States Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. Focuses on strategies for effective advocacy before those courts.

Advanced Contracts Seminar: Presents a detailed look at the practice of contract law in Oregon and elsewhere. Contract attorneys from around the state describe what they do and how they do it, and provide short drafting assignments.

Advanced Legal Research Survey: Introduction to a wide variety of research sources and techniques, including instruction in local ordinances, Oregon and California administrative law and legislative history, topical research, and international law. Training is provided for print resources, free Internet sites, Westlaw and Lexis Nexis. Students compare the effectiveness of research among various print and electronic resources. (Not offered 2007-2008.)

Business Planning: Focuses on the life cycle of a business from its initial organization and operation to its eventual sale and dissolution. Students draft documents for use in hypothetical transactions, compare the way partnerships and corporations deal with similar problems, and analyze the impact taxes have on business decisions.

Climate Change Litigation: Climate change litigation is an emerging practice are for both law firms and nonprofit organizations. Students explore the range of litigation taking place around the world as preparation for such work.

Elder Law: Topics include social security and pensions, health care decision-making, including the right to die, living wills, and durable powers of attorney for health care; planning for health care financing, including alternate living arrangements and financing through private resources, Medicare, and Medicaid; regulation of retirement facilities and nursing homes; and protection of disabled adults through guardianships, conservatorships, and related mechanisms. Also covers the writing requirement.

Environment and Pollution: Emphasizes air and water pollution law. Legal questions address federal laws, enforcement techniques, proper and improper roles of courts, and the concept of forcing technology. Context includes primarily the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.

Estate Planning: Presents problems in estate analysis, planning, and execution; planning an estate from the interview stage to the drafting of wills and trusts to implement the estate plan. Topics include minimizing estate and gift taxes, trusts for minors, charitable giving, disposition of a family business, incapacity, stepfamilies and non-traditional families, and valuation.

Federal Judicial Settlements: Use of court-assisted settlement in the context of civil litigation. A federal magistrate judge explores how lawyers should prepare for and represent their clients in settlement conferences. Students observe judicial settlements and perform the roles of attorneys and clients in classroom simulations.

Hazardous Waste Law: Hazardous waste liability and regulation is moving to the forefront of environmental law as industries, governmental agencies, and citizen groups struggle with the problems of remedying contamination caused by past disposal practices and seek to prevent unsafe disposal in the future. Emphasizes the attorney's roles in compliance counseling, environmental audits, and negotiation between governmental agencies and regulated parties.

Intensive Writing: Students produce documents in a wide variety of practice settings, including office memoranda, contracts, statutes, and client letters. Students receive extensive feedback and opportunities to revise their work.

Interviewing and Counseling: Critical lawyering skills taught through reading, lectures, discussions, participatory exercises, and role-playing. Introduces the concept of the "reflective practice" of law. Role-plays simulate common challenges in law practice that require judgment, skill, and sensitivity by the practitioner. Students learn how to develop effective attorney-client relationships, identify client interests and priorities, recognize different approaches to fact analysis, prepare for counseling session with a client, analyze consequences, and weigh alternatives.

Land Use Law: Surveys the function, operation, and legal impact of state and local public planning and land-use control laws, ordinances, and administrative growth-control techniques; transfer of developmental rights; zoning; variances; conditional-use permits; and non-conforming uses. Considers newer state-level land-use control devices, such as state environmental impact assessment acts (e.g., in California) and statewide land-use planning laws (e.g., in Oregon).

Litigation Practice and Procedure: Teaches practical, effective litigation skills. Participants divide into two law firms, one representing the plaintiff and the other the defendant, to litigate a hypothetical employment case. Students learn how to work with clients, investigate and develop a case, draft and respond to pleadings, initiate and respond to discovery, interview and depose witnesses, conduct motion practice, write and argue motions, and negotiate settlements. Students also learn how to avoid missteps in pretrial litigation. Instruction includes course text, class discussions, and three skill exercises typical to most civil cases - taking and defending depositions, motion arguments, and mediation.

Mediation: Examines mediation practice and the policy implications of the development of mediation as a means of dispute resolution, with a particular focus on attorneys' roles. Includes a full day of mediation skills training.

Negotiation: Develops negotiation skills for crafting deals and resolving disputes. Examines analytical frameworks, interpersonal styles, strategic choices, and observation skills specific to negotiation. Includes simulated negotiations and writing assignments.

Nonprofit Organizations: Covers the corporate governance and tax issues that affect nonprofit organizations. Topics include organization, state regulation, obtaining tax-exempt status, restrictions of lobbying and political activity, private foundations, tax on unrelated business income of tax-exempt organizations, and charitable deduction rules.

Perspectives on Tort Law: Develops a greater understanding and sophistication about tort law and pretrial preparation, including discovery, litigation, and ethics, with the objective of developing professional competence in torts and personal injury practice. Course components include knowledge development and discussion sessions on significant contemporary torts issues; practical and analytical lawyering skills development; research and writing; analysis of ethics issues; and guest lectures by personal injury plaintiff and defense lawyers.

Postconviction Remedies: Overview of criminal justice system through the actual litigation of collateral challenges to criminal convictions and sentences in state and federal proceedings. Includes readings about the federal habeas corpus statutes, postconviction remedies under state law, and procedural issues such as pleading requirements, successive petitions, and exhaustion of state remedies. Students observe and participate in depositions and author a brief. Also satisfies basic or comprehensive writing requirement.

Transactional Practice Laboratory: Students work with lawyers on a transactional project, structured to complement Mergers and Acquisitions (LAW 626) or Secured Land Transactions (LAW 635).

Trial Practice Laboratory: Examines and develops courtroom skills for civil and criminal cases. Covers opening statement, direct examination, cross-examination, objections, closing argument, and voir dire of juries. Each student conducts weekly examinations in class and a full trial at the end of the semester.

Water Resources Law: Riparian and appropriation water law systems, federal and state power over water resources, transfer of water rights, ground water management, public water rights, and environmental constraints on water use.