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2022-2023 Academic Catalog and Student Handbook [Archived Catalog]
Course Descriptions
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Master of Legal Studies |
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MLS 620 - Capstone Continuation
Elective
Students who do not complete the Capstone course within one term may continue their capstone project for an additional term by enrolling in this course.
Prerequisite: In order to take elective courses, MLS students must first complete three of the required core courses, not including the Capstone course.
Units: 0
Grading: Pass/Fail
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MA Law |
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MA 500 - Privacy Dilemmas
This course provides an in-depth look at the scope of privacy rights and the institutional practices and processes that may affect those rights. The course will cover the technology, laws and policies related to privacy issues, including those raised by wiretapping, stored data collection and mining, location tracking, drones and social media.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 506 - Foundational Legal Skills
Required
In this course, students will identify and distinguish sources of law, examine the differences between state and federal court systems, and research, analyze, and synthesize legal materials to write about critical issues, including the use of law as an instrument of social change.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 508 - eLawyering
Required
This introductory course focuses on the overlap between business, technology, and the legal industry. Topics are segmented into three discrete areas of study: Legal Innovation; Automation and AI; and Data. The legal innovation section will offer students a glimpse into the future of legal practice as well as alternative legal services. Both the ethical considerations and career implications will be covered while exposing students to online legal marketing and online practice management. The section covering automation and artificial intelligence will show the efficiency of these technical legal services and lawyer augmentations with careful attention to automation governance and embedded bias. The data portion of the course will touch on data used for legal prediction, eDiscovery and ESI, and privacy and security in the legal sector. Each section of the course will focus on what modern legal service and how insights from other disciplines have disrupted the status quo. The course also considers the secondary effects on law, the legal profession, and legal services likely to arise from the addition of technology to many legal tasks.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 510 - Regulation and Compliance
Legal/regulatory compliance requirements have seen a sharp increase globally. This increase reflects the rather rapid development of normative values regarding compliance and ethics of society at large. This course will review the various types of compliance requirements, and examine related issues such as compliance audits, document retention policies, data security, IT procedures, privacy concerns and governance. It will also address the analytical tools necessary to understand the complexities of compliance as part of a risk analysis and the role of compliance in shaping an entity’s strategy.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 512 - Data Security and Breach
This course will examine legal requirements applicable to data security, including responses to data breach. Topics include laws applicable to public and private entities, methods of data breach investigation, data breach notice requirements and practical considerations, and legal risks exposure arising from data breach and notice.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 514 - Litigation Operations
This course will examine the challenges faced by litigants in the digital age, focusing on the growing importance (and cost) of electronic discovery. This course will cover four general topics: a) optimized roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders (the entity, in-house and outside law firms, and litigation services companies); b) the importance of well-defined process and project management principles in coordinating a response to litigation, including the principles of excellent investigation; how to identify issues and then plan an investigation; and how to conduct thorough witness interviews; c) cost management in the inherently unpredictable process of identifying and sorting through “big data”; and d) litigation technology. The discussion will focus on the “best practices” established by field practitioners who have identified methods for reducing risks and mitigating costs.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 517 - Litigation and Its Alternatives
This course explores the proceedings by which criminal and civil matters are litigated, and alternative strategies such as plea bargaining, restorative justice, negotiation, private and court-ordered commercial arbitration, private judging, mediation, negotiation, and neutral evaluation. After examining litigation alternatives, students will compare the costs and consequences of the various strategies to individuals and society.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 518 - Law Practice Management
With the advent of the pandemic, courts and legal practices have moved in the direction of conducting their business electronically and remotely. This change has transformed the practice of law, whether remote or in-person. Students will gain the theoretical and practical background to understand these changes and to positively impact their employer’s responses to such change. Students will use matter management software, prepare e-filings and use technology to strengthen and present a closing argument.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 519 - Project Management
This course will provide an overview of the principles of project management, addressing principle topics of PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The extensive use of case studies will allow students to apply PMI theory in practical simulated legal projects. Students will develop the skills and knowledge necessary for effective decision-making and project management, including techniques for evaluating profitability, outsourcing opportunities, and law firm considerations like alternative fee arrangements, and the role of technology and innovation in legal project management.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 520 - Introduction to Start-up Law
This course offers an introduction to the legal knowledge necessary for entrepreneurs and emerging start-ups. Using innovate legal tools and processes, the course simulates situations where the law must be considered to launch an enterprise or grow a business. Students work with a company they create and overcome the legal hurdles necessary for a successful launch.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 522 - Building Legal Applications: Document Automations and Expert Systems
Lawyers who learn to automate legal forms and expert systems may sell access to online systems that dispense sophisticated legal analysis without direct human involvement. Government officials may find citizen assistance easier and more cost effective to provide when using expert systems. Courts and legal aid programs are providing intelligent forms for unrepresented litigants. Non-profit organization support their constituents who need assistance with form completion and legal education. In this course you will learn to create scalable expert systems with low-code tools designed to lower barriers and scale service models.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 524 - Blockchain, Smart Contracts, and Computational Law
The public debate about smart contracts, blockchain, and computational law is filled with alarms and elevated expectations. Blockchain technology gives us the framework to create a shared ledger system where various parties can report their compliance data/documentation, property records may be store, personal identities can be managed, corporate governance may be automated, and decentralized currency may be exchanged. Smart contracts make use of the blockchain to execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. Computational law addresses the automation of legal reasoning to support transactions and compliance. The topics examined in this course will include formalism versus contextualism, form versus context, distributed ledgers, smart contract enforceability, blockchain regulation, and automated compliance.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 531 - Emerging Technology and the Law
This course provides a forum for students to consider the relationship between key emerging technologies and the law. Each module discusses the legal implications of a particular emerging technology such as autonomous cars, drones, robots, big data, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, quantum computing, and 3D printing. Students will be asked to consider whether existing legal frameworks are sufficient to address issues related to emerging technologies and the basis for new frameworks will be considered.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 535 - Data Science in Law and Policy
In the legal industry professionals utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to perform analyses that were once labor-intensive endeavors. Those analyses may be used to inform everything from the sentencing of defendants to policing procedures to lawyers’ performance in courtrooms to judicial decisions. Although technology may be used to replicate human decision-making, legal professionals play an essential role in compiling data sets, defining queries, and interpreting findings to present them accessibly for broader audiences. This course will cover the ways data is used in the legal industry and the ethical obligation of legal professionals to question both data driven decisions and their underlying algorithms.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 537 - eDiscovery
Litigation often involves the collection, production, management, and analysis of electronically store information (ESI). An enormous amount of data exists that may help make a case or predict the outcomes of approaches and legal rulings. This course considers the legal and operational issues associated with managing electronic information as well as the legal rules governing of this area.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 540 - Technology for Legal Professionals
Technology has transformed the legal industry. This course will provide students with the theoretical and practical background to understand these changes while having a positive impact on a firm’s or an organization’s responses to such challenges. Areas of special focus include: litigation technologies; court technologies; document storage, security and management; evidentiary considerations of ESI; communication software including encryption technology; and hands-on exercises in Microsoft’s Office suite designed for legal professionals.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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MA 550 - Master of Arts in Law Capstone
Required
This course focuses on the overlap between business, entrepreneurship, law, technology, and the legal industry. The outcome of this course will be a solution to a student define challenge in the legal system. This solution may be an application, white paper, prototype, community workshop, legal training, or other faculty approved deliverable. All projects will use design skills to ideate challenges, entrepreneurial and legal skills to define an actionable challenge, communication skills to establish and involve stakeholders, business skills to scope and plan the project, legal skills to analyze the problem, entrepreneurial skills to innovate a solution and communication skills to deliver a solution. Successful projects will define a challenge, provide a solution, and implement that solution. The Capstone offers students the opportunity to apply interdisciplinary skills learned in the program and emphasize their area of interest and focus through groupwork with other students.
Units: 3
Grading: Letter Grade
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Life Long Learner |
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LLL 500 - Privacy Dilemmas
This course provides an in-depth look at the scope of privacy rights and the institutional practices and processes that may affect those rights. The course will cover the technology, laws and policies related to privacy issues, including those raised by wiretapping, stored data collection and mining, location tracking, drones and social media.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
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-
LLL 508 - eLawyering
This introductory course focuses on the overlap between business, technology, and the legal industry. Topics are segmented into three discrete areas of study: Legal Innovation; Automation and AI; and Data. The legal innovation section will offer students a glimpse into the future of legal practice as well as alternative legal services. Both the ethical considerations and career implications will be covered while exposing students to online legal marketing and online practice management. The section covering automation and artificial intelligence will show the efficiency of these technical legal services and lawyer augmentations with careful attention to automation governance and embedded bias. The data portion of the course will touch on data used for legal prediction, eDiscovery and ESI, and privacy and security in the legal sector. Each section of the course will focus on what modern legal service and how insights from other disciplines have disrupted the status quo. The course also considers the secondary effects on law, the legal profession, and legal services likely to arise from the addition of technology to many legal tasks.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
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-
LLL 510 - Regulation and Compliance
Legal/regulatory compliance requirements have seen a sharp increase globally. This increase reflects the rather rapid development of normative values regarding compliance and ethics of society at large. This course will review the various types of compliance requirements, and examine related issues such as compliance audits, document retention policies, data security, IT procedures, privacy concerns and governance. It will also address the analytical tools necessary to understand the complexities of compliance as part of a risk analysis and the role of compliance in shaping an entity’s strategy.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
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-
LLL 512 - Data Security and Breach
This course will examine legal requirements applicable to data security, including responses to data breach. Topics include laws applicable to public and private entities, methods of data breach investigation, data breach notice requirements and practical considerations, and legal risks exposure arising from data breach and notice.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
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| |
-
LLL 514 - Litigation Operations
This course will examine the challenges faced by litigants in the digital age, focusing on the growing importance (and cost) of electronic discovery. This course will cover four general topics: a) optimized roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders (the entity, in-house and outside law firms, and litigation services companies); b) the importance of well-defined process and project management principles in coordinating a response to litigation, including the principles of excellent investigation; how to identify issues and then plan an investigation; and how to conduct thorough witness interviews; c) cost management in the inherently unpredictable process of identifying and sorting through “big data”; and d) litigation technology. The discussion will focus on the “best practices” established by field practitioners who have identified methods for reducing risks and mitigating costs.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
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| |
-
LLL 517 - Litigation and its Alternatives
This course explores the proceedings by which criminal and civil matters are litigated, and alternative strategies such as plea bargaining, restorative justice, negotiation, private and court-ordered commercial arbitration, private judging, mediation, negotiation, and neutral evaluation. After examining litigation alternatives, students will compare the costs and consequences of the various strategies to individuals and society.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
|
| |
-
LLL 518 - Law Practice Management
With the advent of the pandemic, courts and legal practices have moved in the direction of conducting their business electronically and remotely. This change has transformed the practice of law, whether remote or in-person. Students will gain the theoretical and practical background to understand these changes and to positively impact their employer’s responses to such change. Students will use matter management software, prepare e-filings and use technology to strengthen and present a closing argument.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
|
| |
-
LLL 519 - Project Management
This course will provide an overview of the principles of project management, addressing principle topics of PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The extensive use of case studies will allow students to apply PMI theory in practical simulated legal projects. Students will develop the skills and knowledge necessary for effective decision-making and project management, including techniques for evaluating profitability, outsourcing opportunities, and law firm considerations like alternative fee arrangements, and the role of technology and innovation in legal project management.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
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| |
-
LLL 520 - Introduction to Start-up Law
This course offers an introduction to the legal knowledge necessary for entrepreneurs and emerging start-ups. Using innovate legal tools and processes, the course simulates situations where the law must be considered to launch an enterprise or grow a business. Students work with a company they create and overcome the legal hurdles necessary for a successful launch.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
|
| |
-
LLL 522 - Building Legal Applications: Document Automations and Expert Systems
Lawyers who learn to automate legal forms and expert systems may sell access to online systems that dispense sophisticated legal analysis without direct human involvement. Government officials may find citizen assistance easier and more cost effective to provide when using expert systems. Courts and legal aid programs are providing intelligent forms for unrepresented litigants. Non-profit organization support their constituents who need assistance with form completion and legal education. In this course you will learn to create scalable expert systems with low-code tools designed to lower barriers and scale service models.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
|
| |
-
LLL 524 - Blockchain, Smart Contracts, and Computational Law
The public debate about smart contracts, blockchain, and computational law is filled with alarms and elevated expectations. Blockchain technology gives us the framework to create a shared ledger system where various parties can report their compliance data/documentation, property records may be store, personal identities can be managed, corporate governance may be automated, and decentralized currency may be exchanged. Smart contracts make use of the blockchain to execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. Computational law addresses the automation of legal reasoning to support transactions and compliance. The topics examined in this course will include formalism versus contextualism, form versus context, distributed ledgers, smart contract enforceability, blockchain regulation, and automated compliance.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
|
| |
-
LLL 531 - Emerging Technology and the Law
This course provides a forum for students to consider the relationship between key emerging technologies and the law. Each module discusses the legal implications of a particular emerging technology such as autonomous cars, drones, robots, big data, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, quantum computing, and 3D printing. Students will be asked to consider whether existing legal frameworks are sufficient to address issues related to emerging technologies and the basis for new frameworks will be considered.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
|
| |
-
LLL 535 - Data Science in Law and Policy
In the legal industry professionals utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to perform analyses that were once labor-intensive endeavors. Those analyses may be used to inform everything from the sentencing of defendants to policing procedures to lawyers’ performance in courtrooms to judicial decisions. Although technology may be used to replicate human decision-making, legal professionals play an essential role in compiling data sets, defining queries, and interpreting findings to present them accessibly for broader audiences. This course will cover the ways data is used in the legal industry and the ethical obligation of legal professionals to question both data driven decisions and their underlying algorithms.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
|
| |
-
LLL 537 - eDiscovery
Litigation often involves the collection, production, management, and analysis of electronically store information (ESI). An enormous amount of data exists that may help make a case or predict the outcomes of approaches and legal rulings. This course considers the legal and operational issues associated with managing electronic information as well as the legal rules governing of this area.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
|
| |
-
LLL 540 - Technology for Legal Professionals
Technology has transformed the legal industry. This course will provide students with the theoretical and practical background to understand these changes while having a positive impact on a firm’s or an organization’s responses to such challenges. Areas of special focus include: litigation technologies; court technologies; document storage, security and management; evidentiary considerations of ESI; communication software including encryption technology; and hands-on exercises in Microsoft’s Office suite designed for legal professionals.
Units: 0
Grading: Letter Grade
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