UConn School of Law

Introduction

As a result of several decades of sustained intellectual and foundational growth, UConn School of Law has emerged as one of the leading public law schools in the United States. Because of UConn School of Law’s extraordinary student-to-faculty ratio, 94 percent of the advanced course sections have 25 or fewer students. An outstanding and accessible faculty; an intensive first-year skills program; a rich and varied curriculum, including more than a dozen legal clinics; four student-edited journals; student organizations active across the spectrum of legal and social concerns; a regular flow of visiting lecturers; and a committed body of graduates throughout the country combine to make UConn a school of exceptional strength.

Library and Physical Facilities

The campus, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is arguably the most beautiful in the United States. The library is one of the largest legal research and technology centers in the world, with more than 500,000 volumes housed in the 120,000-square-foot facility.

With its immediate neighbors—the Hartford Seminary, the University of Hartford, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office—the school is part of an academic enclave in a turn-of-the-century residential neighborhood.

Experiential Education

UConn School of Law was a pioneer in clinical legal education, and our experiential learning opportunities continue to be a distinguishing strength of the school. The law school provides a broad range of required experiential learning opportunities in which students can integrate practical experience with the theory learned in the classroom. These programs enable students to develop crucial lawyering skills, deepen their understanding of how the law and legal institutions operate on the ground, and explore possible career options.

Connecticut has a generous student practice rule enabling second- and third-year students, under the supervision of faculty attorneys, to represent clients in any court in our jurisdiction. This experience allows students to gain the practical lawyering skills involved in client intake, case strategy and development, motion practice, and oral advocacy, as well as alternative dispute resolution.

Students may participate in our in-house legal clinics and field placement courses.

Practice Based Learning experience is required and is offered in the following areas:

• Asylum and Human Rights Clinic
• Criminal Appellate Clinic
• Criminal Trial Clinic
• Elder Law Clinic
• Energy and Environmental Law Field Placement
• Environmental Law Clinic
• Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic
• Judicial Field Placement
• Legislative Field Placement
• Mediation Clinic
• State’s Attorney Field Placement
• Tax Clinic
• US Attorney’s Clinic

The Individual Field Placement Program offers students an opportunity for experiential learning that is tailored to the student’s own interests and educational and career goals. Hundreds of organizations participate in our externship program.

The Semester in Washington, DC, places selected students in selected federal agencies, legislative offices, or nonprofit groups for one semester of service.

Specialized Programs: Centers, Certificates, and Dual Degrees

The Energy and Environmental Law Certificate offers students the opportunity to develop substantive knowledge in energy and environmental law. The Intellectual Property Certificate Program exposes participants to a broad curriculum of courses, from classes on patent, trademark, and copyright law to specialized seminars, including those in art law, cyber law, and European Union IP law. In addition, the Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic was selected by the US Patent and Trademark Office to participate in a special clinical program. The Tax Studies Certificate Program affords students an opportunity to participate in a supervised writing project, field placement, or clinic in the area of tax law. Participants in the certificate program may begin their tax studies in Federal Income Tax during their first year and continue the study of taxation in a variety of courses during each of the remaining semesters of law school. A Human Rights Certificate Program offers students the opportunity to work with world-renowned experts at the law school and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in a demanding and varied interdisciplinary study of global affairs and social justice. The law school has also created a Law and Public Policy Certificate Program, a flexible program in which students may enroll in a diverse collection of courses with faculty at the law school and within the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy. The School of Law, in partnership with the School of Business, offers a certificate in Corporate and Regulatory Compliance for professionals interested in compliance, ethics, internal monitoring, regulatory affairs, and related areas. The Transactional Practice Certificate program provides students with the educational opportunities—in the classroom and through experiential placements—necessary to develop substantive knowledge in transactional law, as well as opportunities for experiential learning about transactional practice.

The Insurance Law Center offers a specialized insurance curriculum with its LLM program, innovative research initiatives on the role of insurance in law and society, conferences and workshops, and the student-edited Connecticut Insurance Law Journal. The Center for Energy and Environmental Law brings together experts from many disciplines to tackle the urgent task of offering and analyzing better ways to meet the world’s energy needs and preparing the leaders of tomorrow for the difficult choices that lie ahead. The Center for Children’s Advocacy allows students to assist in representing individual children in cases involving abuse/neglect, families with service needs, special education, juvenile justice, and access to medical/mental health care. In addition, students represent adolescents at Hartford high schools where the center operates a Teen Legal Advocacy Clinic. The Connecticut Urban Legal Initiative, Inc. (CULI) provides transactional, nonlitigation legal services to nonprofit organizations. In recent years, CULI has expanded its practice to include housing authorities and municipalities in its client base.

The law school offers several interdisciplinary programs:

• JD/Diploma in Educational Administration
• JD/Master of Business Administration
• JD/Master of Public Administration
• JD/Master of Public Policy
• JD/Master of Public Health
• JD/Master of Social Work

We also have LLM programs in Energy and Environmental Law, Human Rights and Social Justice, Insurance Law, and US Legal Studies.

International Study

The economic and political realities of globalization place new demands on the graduates of the law school. International law occupies a quite prominent place in the curriculum, reinforced by the student-edited Connecticut Journal of International Law. The law school has formal and informal study-abroad programs with universities in Aix-en-Provence, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, Exeter, Haifa, Leiden, London, Mannheim, Nottingham, Siena, and Tilburg. These relationships bring a wealth of international visitors to the school. Legal scholars have visited and lectured from Albania, Argentina, Bulgaria, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, and Ukraine. The LLM in United States Legal Studies for graduates of foreign law schools provides further opportunity for our students to learn from and study with peers trained in different legal systems.

Career Planning Center

UConn operates a comprehensive career planning office for the benefit of students and alumni. The Career Planning Office is staffed by four attorneys and although all can act as generalists, each has a focused expertise in private sector, public interest, nontraditional, clerkships, and other areas of interest to our students. The school offers a geographically diverse on-campus interview program, extensive individual and group counseling, a resource library, job listings, employment information sessions, and newsletters.

The school holds an off-campus interview program each August in Boston, and schedules on-campus interviews and career receptions throughout the year. In addition, the school participates in several off-site job fairs throughout the country.

Within 10 months of graduation, 93.8 percent of the class of 2016 were employed.

Student Activities

Selected students may participate in one of four student-edited journals: the Connecticut Law Review, the Connecticut Journal of International Law, the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal, and the Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal.

The Connecticut Moot Court Board, the Mock Trial Association, and the Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Society, provide students with the opportunity to practice oral advocacy in intra- and interscholastic competitions. Participants have placed extremely well in regional, national, and international competitions.

The Student Bar Association is the student governing body of which all students are members. It manages an annual budget consisting of funds derived from the student activities fee and university tuition to support the various student organizations and to generally enhance the quality of student life. Under the governance of the Student Bar Association, a large number of student-run organizations, reflecting the diversity of our students, have active chapters on campus.

Services for Students with Disabilities

The Director of Student Services works with students with disabilities in the development and implementation of reasonable accommodations to allow access to the school’s physical facilities as well as its educational and extracurricular programs. Students with disabilities who are considering applying or who have been admitted to the School of Law are invited to tour the campus. Students may call 860.570.5244 regarding accommodations.

Character and Fitness

In accordance with Section 504(a) of the American Bar Association’s Standards for Approval of Law Schools, applicants to the law school should understand that there are character, fitness, and other qualifications for admission to the bar. Applicants are therefore encouraged, prior to matriculation, to determine what those requirements are in the states in which the applicant intends to practice. Additional information is available from the National Conference of Bar Examiners.