Law Success
The Office of law success
Our mission is to help students achieve success in law school, on the bar exam, and in practice
To accomplish our mission the Law Success program takes an innovative, data-driven approach to student growth by using assessments and data-gathering to plan legal skills development, bar exam initiatives, and to tailor individual academic counseling.
The data also forms the foundation of our rigorous legal skills curriculum, including our first-year writing and lawyering class and our third-year bar preparation for credit course, and involves significant writing development, practice readiness simulations, and individual student skill building.
The core of Law Success is academic advising, our legal skills curriculum, and our bar preparation programming.
Legal Skills Curriculum
The Office of Law Success works to accomplish our mission through an innovative curriculum that spans students’ legal education.
LCAP I (3 credits) – Taken in the fall of their 1L year, Legal Communication, Analysis and Professionalism (LCAP), is a core part of the first-year legal curriculum that helps students build skills in the foundational areas of case analysis, legal research, legal writing, and professionalism. Written exercises, including the drafting of client letters and legal memoranda, are required. Students will also learn the basics of client communication and client interviewing. LCAP is a rigorous course designed to push students to become outstanding legal communicators.
LCAP II (3 credits) – Taken in the spring of their 1L year, students continue to build foundational legal writing, communication, and professionalism skills. Students will learn various aspects of intra-office communication, including professional emails, and meeting with attorneys to present findings and analysis. The course will culminate in the drafting of an appellate brief that requires complex legal analysis, and a subsequent mock oral argument.
Bar Prep for Credit (2 credits) – This course covers each component of the bar exam, with a focus on the most heavily-weighted parts and offers students the opportunity to get a head start on their preparation for this last step before professional licensure. The course also covers other valuable skills that affect test performance, including effective study techniques, time management, and self-assessment. Bar Prep for Credit is mandatory for students in the bottom 50% of the class but is also open to all students interested in having a head start in preparing for the bar exam.
The Office of Law Success recognizes that students come to law school with several goals—to succeed in school, to pass the bar exam, and to utilize their law degree to great success.
Academic Advising
To provide a consistent point of contact in accomplishing their goals, every student is paired with an academic adviser their first year that will serve as their adviser and instructor in their first-year course and then will continue as their academic adviser until graduation. Students can meet with their adviser as regularly as they would like for guidance, including to receive individualized advice, to develop academic and legal skills, and to prepare themselves as a young professional for the practice of law.
Further, the Law Success Program conducts assessments of student performance so that students and faculty can then focus on the skills each student must work most to develop to find success.
We’re here each step of the way, because we care about our students getting the support that they need at every juncture of their journey into the legal profession.
Forward-Looking Academic Advising
You came to law school with several goals–to succeed in school, to pass the bar exam, and to utlize your law degree to great success! We are here to help you meet those goals. In your first meetings your Law Success Instructor will work to understand your goals and tailor their advice to help you meet your short and long term goals.
Guided Skill Building
As you progress through law school you will work with our innovative skills library and programming to continue to develop your skills to the level legal employers are looking for when making hiring decisions.
Preparation for the Bar Exam
In many ways you are preparing for the bar exam from the moment you start law school because it is a necessary step on your journey to becoming an attorney. Part of our mission is to get you ready for the bar, and our bar experts will work with you across all three years of law school to ensure you are ready to tackle that final hurdle to professional licensure.
The heart of Law Success is to recognize and embrace that different people have different areas of strength coming into law school. No one comes in a fully formed attorney. Meeting them where they are as they start and as they continue to progress is a huge goal of ours and a critical part of the mission.