J.D. Admissions | Columbia Law School

Academic Life as a First Year

We believe that the first year of law school—our Foundation Curriculum—must be a time of opening new horizons, rather than one of stress and conformity; a time when students are encouraged to develop their understanding of how law works within a society.

The Fall

• Legal Methods, the centerpiece of the Foundation Curriculum, serves as an introduction to legal institutions and processes, as well as to the skills necessary in the professional use of case law and legislation

• Legal Practice Workshop I, which provides training in the analysis of legal problems and in the hands-on use of a variety of legal materials

• Civil Procedure, which establishes the fundamental aspects of the civil litigation process in the United States

• Contracts, which provides a thorough introduction to the law of contracts, including the examination of fraud and the bargaining process, and among other things

• Torts, which introduces our students to non-contractual wrongs for which private compensation is sought under the common law

The Spring

• Foundation Year Moot Court, which represents, for some, their first practical exposure to the dynamics of a courtroom

• Constitutional Law, which introduces students to constitutional law, providing a foundation for more specialized courses on the Constitution and for public law courses generally

• Criminal Law, which explores major problems of the criminal law and its administration, with an emphasis on the issues that necessarily arise in the formation and application of a satisfactory penal code

• Legal Practice Workshop II, which serves as a continuation of the research, writing, and analysis skills built in Legal Practice Workshop I

• Property, which poses fundamental questions about efficiency and fairness in dealing with ownership that are mediated through the legal system

• First-Year Elective, which provides our students with the opportunity to explore the vast breadth and depth of our curriculum as early as their first year. Some examples include: Foundations of the Regulatory State, Law and Development, and The United States and the International Legal System