Graduation Requirements

General Juris Doctor (J.D.) Requirements 

The Law School requires 90 credit hours for graduation.  Students must pass all required courses in order to graduate.  At least 65 of the 90 credit hours required for graduation must be earned by attendance in regularly-scheduled law school class sessions.[1]  This does not include externships, residencies, moot court, trial competitions, law review, directed research programs, or courses taken in parts of the University outside the Law School for which credit toward the J.D. degree is granted. 

Full-time students are required to take a minimum of 10 credit hours each trimester and are limited to a maximum of 14 credit hours per trimester.  The Law School’s academic year consists of more than 140 days on which classes are regularly scheduled.  The academic year is appromixately ten months long, consisting of an August Term, Fall Trimester, optional December Term (in the second year), Winter Trimester and Spring Trimester. 

Each student must also fulfill a Communications Requirement in every trimester after the first year. The Communications Requirement is intended to develop communication skills and provide the student interim feedback on those skills. The residency fulfills the Communications Requirement for the residency term. In other terms, the Requirement may be filled by the completion of a law review note, competition on Moot Court or Mock Trial, completion of a Leadership Fellow Capstone Project, or a course designated by the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs as a “Communications Course.”

Each student must also complete a Bridge to Practice Course. This course must be taken after the student’s residency. The Bridge Course may involve an extended simulation, a field component, or a live-client experience in the relevant practice area and could involve other educational approaches at the professor’s discretion.  Bridge courses will provide students opportunities to: (1) exercise professional judgment; (2) evaluate legal strategies; (3) build on and apply legal knowledge from other courses to novel factual situations; (4) synthesize legal knowledge from across doctrinal areas; and (5) practice advanced oral and written communication skills. The Associate Dean for Academic Affairs will designate which courses count as Bridge to Practice Courses.

Finally, every student must take Bar Exam Foundations, a 4-credit course that takes place partly in the 3L August Term and partly in the 3L Fall Term.

To graduate from Elon, students generally must be enrolled as full-time students in residence for a minimum of seven trimesters.[2]  A cumulative grade point average of 2.250 or higher is required for graduation. 

Program of Study 

The First Year

The required first-year program consists of 41 credit hours.  The first-year class at the Law School is divided into six sections of approximately 20-22 students.  Other than small break out groups for the first-year leadership course (Lawyering, Leadership & Professionalism) and the lab component to the first-year Criminal Law course, all first-year courses are taught by full-time faculty. 

* Lawyering, Leadership & Professionalism takes place mostly within the 1L August Term, but continues with one short mandatory session during each of the Fall, Winter, and Spring Trimesters., One credit for the course is awarded at the end of the August Term, and the other is awarded at the end of the Spring Trimester. 

For the Spring Trimester, first-year students choose whether to take Business Associations or Evidence, though those courses are subject to enrollment caps. 

The Second Year

The second-year under the Law School’s new curriculum combines required courses, elective courses, and experiential learning through a residency-in-practice requirement.  Second-year students return from an 8-week summer break to take Professional Responsibility and Public Law & Leadership, the Law School’s 2L leadership course, during a 3-week August Term.  All second-year students are required to take either Business Associations or Evidence during the Fall trimester. 

Also during either the Winter or Spring trimester of the second year, students must complete a Residency-in-Practice, along with an accompanying course.  Residency-in-Practice placements may include a position in a judge’s chambers, a non-profit legal organization (such as Legal Aid), a government agency, a corporate counsel office, or  a private law firm.  In the Residency-in-Practice, students work 32 or 36 hours per week for 10 weeks for 7 or 8 academic credits while taking a related accompanying course at the law school (either in person or via distance learning depending on the proximity of the student’s Residency-in-Practice placement). 

During each trimester that a second-year student is not doing a Residency-in-Practice, the student must take at least one “communication” course, selected from a group of such courses as designated by the Law School faculty.  These courses continue the communications focus of the first-year curriculum.  

The second-year curriculum also includes an optional two-week December Term, during which students may elect to take short, intensive courses, including studies abroad. 

The chart below shows a sample second-year schedule, though a student’s actual second-year schedule may differ substantially, as the Residency-in-Practice may be taken in either the Winter or Spring Trimester, and Business Associations and Evidence may be taken in either the Fall Trimester of their second year or the Spring Trimester of their first year:

* Students are required to satisfy a “Communications Requirement” in every second-year term that is not the student’s Residency term.  This may be done through courses designated as “Communications Courses” at the Law School or through various activities such as moot court or mock trial.  In exceptional circumstances, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs has the discretionary power to waive a student’s “Communications Requirement” for a particular term.

** The December Term is a two-week elective term.  Students may opt to take short-courses during this term. 

***Constitutional Law II is taken in the trimester that the student is not in Residency.

The Final Trimester

The final trimester under the Law School’s revised curriculum is intended to prepare students to pass the bar examination and to transition to practice.  As such, students return for August Term to take the Law School’s Bar Foundation course.  This course reviews core bar-tested subjects.  This course continues into the 3L Fall Trimester.

In the Fall Trimester of the third year, students are also required to take a “Bridge-to-Practice” course, selected from a list of such courses as designated by the Law School faculty, which serves to transition students from the study of law to the practice of law through the use of simulations and other practice-focused teaching techniques. 

The chart below shows a typical final-trimester schedule for students under the Law School’s new curriculum: 

Upper-Level Writing Requirement: All Classes

The faculty has approved an Upper-Level Writing Requirement which must be completed by all law students during their second or third year as a graduation requirement.  The goals of the Upper-Level Writing Requirement are:

1. (1)  To further develop students’ basic writing and research skills;
2. (2)  To provide students with an opportunity to analyze, synthesize, and organize a substantial body of knowledge; and
3. (3)  To provide students with an opportunity for in-depth engagement in a narrow legal subject area.

A student satisfies the Upper-Level Writing Requirement by completing one or more written projects that require rigorous intellectual effort.  Projects must be completed under the active and regular supervision of a faculty member who provides instruction, guidance, and feedback on the student’s work, and who is available for individual meetings to discuss the student’s progress toward successful completion of the Upper-Level Writing Requirement.

The requirement can be met by writing, among other things, a scholarly paper, a law review note or comment, legal briefs or memoranda, or other legal documents.  Generally, the length of the documents to be drafted in order to complete this requirement should be at least twenty (20) pages of text in the aggregate, but the professor supervising completion of the project or projects shall have the discretion to determine the required length.

The courses that may be used to satisfy the Upper-Level Writing Requirement are noted in the registration materials sent to students each term.

In addition, a student may satisfy the Upper-Level Writing Requirement in the context of an Independent Study course for credit, as approved in advance by the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. 

An Intent Form must be submitted to the Law School Registrar within one week of the first day of the term when the student intends to complete the requirement. To receive credit for satisfactorily completing the Upper-Level Writing Requirement, the student must submit a Completion Form, signed by the faculty member supervising the Requirement, which certifies that the Requirement has been satisfactorily completed.