Study

Please note: This course is offered only in the fall. And those wishing to drop the course must do so within three days after the first class.

The course introduces students to appellate advocacy and the appellate process. Students learn the mechanics of briefing and arguing an appeal, as well as strategies for effective appellate advocacy. They also have the opportunity to refine their advocacy skills by orally arguing a case to an appellate judge. The central project entails each student briefing one side of a case and presenting oral argument for that side. The Fall 2023 syllabus is representative of how the course will be taught, including the assessment methods and assignments; in the Fall 2024, the instructor will be Judge Allegra Collins of the North Carolina Court of Appeals. An updated syllabus will be available at the beginning of the semester.

The Children’s Law Clinic provides students with an opportunity to represent low-income children and parents on issues relating to the social determinants of health, including education, public benefits, and access to adequate healthcare. Students will work in teams on case assignments that could involve client interviewing and counseling, negotiation, informal advocacy, and litigation in administrative hearings or court. There will also be opportunities to engage in policy and community education projects. With training and supervision from clinic faculty, students will act as the lead attorneys for the matters on their caseload allowing them to develop critical professional skills such as case strategy development and time management. In the weekly two-hour seminar, students will engage in interactive practical skills training, learn substantive law, and analyze the broader systemic injustices that impact children and families. Students work on clinic cases approximately 10-12 hours a week, for a minimum of 100 hours (4 credits) or 125 hours (5 credits) of legal work during the semester. There is no paper and no exam. Students must be in at least their second semester of law school to enroll in the clinic due to state student practice rules. Students must meet the legal ethics graduation requirement either before or during enrollment in the Children's Law Clinic.

Important:

• This course may not be dropped after the first class meeting.
• Students MUST be able to attend the day-long clinic intensive training session to enroll in this course.
• International LLM students who wish to enroll in a clinic must seek the permission of the clinic's faculty director prior to the enrollment period. Permission is required to enroll but permission does not constitute entry into the clinic.

Ethics Requirement

• Students are required to have instruction in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct prior to, or during, enrollment in the Children's Law Clinic. Examples of ethics classes that meet the requirement include Ethics in Action: Large Firm Practice (LAW 231), Ethics of Social Justice Lawyering (LAW 237), Ethics and the Law of Lawyering (LAW 238), Ethics and the Law of Lawyering in Civil Litigation (LAW 239), Criminal Justice Ethics (LAW 317) and Ethics in Action (LAW 539).

This is the basic trial skills course covering Opening Statement, Direct Examination, Cross Examination, Impeachment, Exhibits, and Closing Argument. Depending on the instructor, Expert witnesses may also be a class topic. 

In sections of 12 students per section, students prepare and perform the skills using simulated problems and case files. Every student performs at every class.  After each performance, each student receives constructive comments from their faculty member.  Students video recordings of each of their performances and at least several are reviewed privately with the student’s instructor. Each faculty member is an experienced trial lawyer.

The course ends with a full jury trial of a civil or criminal case with teams of two students on each side. When the trial ends, the jury deliberates, and students can watch via a video and audio feed.

Please note: The Trial Practice Intensive is scheduled to begin on the evening of Thursday, January 16, 2025 and continue with sessions on the afternoon of Friday, January 17; half day on Saturday, January 18; and half day Sunday, January 19. Attendance is mandatory for each session.

This practical skills course focuses on the path civil litigators must navigate prior to trial. It is becoming increasingly rare for cases to be decided by a jury.  Lawyers must instead learn to succeed during the pretrial process.  We will examine the key components of the civil pretrial litigation process, beginning with the filing of a law suit.  The class will be divided into law firms on the second week of class. You will work with co-counsel, representing a hypothetical client, for the entire semester.  Law firms will prepare and serve discovery and respond to discovery from opposing counsel. Students will prepare and argue a short discovery motion. The last four weeks of class focus on depositions, with each student taking and defending a deposition. This course will help students synthesize and more deeply understand the strategy and the practical application of civil procedure and evidence rules used in litigation advocacy. 

Topics  include:

• Drafting pleadings and motions
• Preparing and responding to discovery
• Taking and defending depositions
• Practicing becoming a more effective advocate in the current on-line environment facing all attorneys and courts.

The course grade is based on written and practical skills-based work product and class participation, as described in the syllabus.  There is not a final exam.

This Clinic will develop and hone civil litigation skills in the context of working on actual cases taken in directly by the CJC or working in association with the Durham and Raleigh offices of Legal Aid of North Carolina, with the Consumer Protection Division of the North Carolina Attorney Generals’ office, and with the North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings. Cases will focus on vindicating the rights of impoverished individuals or groups who cannot otherwise adequately find justice in the civil courts. 

Students will be directly supervised by the Clinic Director and/or Supervising Attorney and/or Legal Aid attorneys. Cases may include prosecuting unsafe housing claims, defense of eviction claims, prosecuting unfair trade practice and debt collection claims, administrative hearing appeals for the revocation of licenses/certifications, representation of domestic violence victims, and a variety of other civil matters. 

Initial classroom training in the various stages of civil litigation will be conducted by the Clinic Director and Supervising Attorney, followed by weekly individual or group meetings and training sessions. Skill development will include interviewing clients/witnesses, review of relevant documents/discovery, assessment of cases, drafting of pleadings, drafting of discovery, taking of depositions, recognition of ethics issues, and actual court or agency appearances. All enrolled students will be required to provide a minimum of 100 hours of client legal work per semester as well as to participate in the weekly class and training sessions. The CJC is typically taken for 4 credit hours, but with permission, it may be taken for 5 or 6 hrs. with additional minimum hour requirements.

Students must be in at least their third semester of law school to enroll in the Clinic. Courses in Evidence and/or Trial Practice are recommended but not required as prerequisites or corequisites.

Important:

• This course may not be dropped after the first class meeting.
• Students must be able to attend the day-long clinic intensive training session to enroll in this course.
• International LLM students who wish to enroll in the clinic must seek the permission of the Clinic Director prior to the enrollment period.
• An Advanced Civil Justice Clinic can be available for a second semester, with the permission of the Clinic Director.

The Wrongful Convictions Clinic pursues plausible claims of legal and factual innocence made by incarcerated people in North Carolina convicted of serious felonies. 

Students in the clinic study the causes of wrongful convictions, including mistaken eyewitness identification, false confessions, faulty forensic evidence, “jailhouse snitches,” and race. Student-attorneys work under the supervision of faculty to develop, manage, and litigate cases by carrying out a wide range of legal activities, including communicating with our clients, locating and interviewing witnesses about facts, gathering documents and records, drafting a range of legal documents and memos, working with experts, and helping to prepare for evidentiary hearings and oral arguments in state and federal courts. Most clinic cases do not involve DNA.

Many former students describe their time in the clinic, working to exonerate individuals incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit, as their most rewarding experience during law school.

Forensic evidence, from DNA to fingerprints to ballistics, has never been more important in criminal cases. However, litigating scientific evidence in the courtroom is not like it appears on TV shows like CSI it is challenging and requires some specialized skills. We are again offering a short course to provide those skills. By the end of the course you will be able to handle sophisticated scientific evidence in the courtroom. While the focus is on forensics used in criminal cases, many of the same principles and skills apply when litigating scientific evidence in any type of case. The course is a practicum: a scientific evidence trial advocacy course. We will begin with introductory lectures both on forensics and how to prepare for trial, so that students will be fully ready for their parts in the last third of the course, which will focus on the trial simulations. During the simulations, the prosecutors will first interview their forensic experts (one of your instructors), and talk to them about their case file documents, which are taken from real cases. The class will break into groups to brainstorm potential motions to exclude expert testimony or limit language and discuss collectively as a class, both sides will conduct mock trials with direct and cross-examination of forensic experts before a judge, and finally, we will conduct closings. These sessions will be spread out over several weeks, to permit watching video of prior sessions to prepare for the next portion of the trial. We will also exchange feedback in between each session to talk about what worked and what did not. Each student will have a chance to present in these simulations. The course will also be to open to a select group of experienced practicing criminal lawyers who will collaborate with students throughout the simulations. Students will be graded on a memo written reflecting on their portion of the trial; their draft questions finalizing their planned questions; and on their participation and oral advocacy in the simulations. While having taken evidence or trial advocacy is helpful, it is not a prerequisite.

This course will provide students a framework for effective client interviewing and counseling, skills which are foundational to successful lawyering. While lawyers must master substantive and procedural law to gain the confidence of their clients, they must be able to exercise effective communication skills in “real time.”  Legal Interviewing and Counseling will help students learn to plan effective interviewing and counseling sessions, to identify and solve problems collaboratively with clients, and to further develop their abilities to effectively communicate difficult legal and factual information. This course seeks to further understanding of a broad range of communication skills, to facilitate client decision making and implementation of solutions, to manage the professional relationship, and to navigate common ethical issues that arise in the context of legal interviewing and counseling. Structured in-class simulation exercises will allow students to develop and practice these skills in real-world contexts . While each of these skills will be developed over the entirety of any lawyer's career, Legal Interviewing & Counseling aims to help students to jumpstart this development and to gain additional tools needed to ensure effective client relationships when they enter practice. Students will be evaluated on their participation in structured, in-class simulation exercises and discussions; video-taped skills exercises done outsides of class; guided self-assessments; guided reviews of other students' simulation exercises; and a final capstone simulation interview and counseling projects. Students will be required to attend class regularly and to participate consistently in all exercises. Students will be assessed on a C/NC basis. 

This a practitioner’s skills course.

It is designed to introduce students to practitioner skills against a backdrop of some of the main employment law issues that arise on a frequent basis in the American workplace.

Using a variety of approaches to instruction including mock exercises, outside speakers, writing exercises (such as drafting communications to government agencies or corporate clients), and drawing from current developments in the law, the student will become familiar with basic concepts underlying employment law and, equally importantly, the practice skills involved in delivering legal advice and counsel about the issues presented.

While the focus will be on representing an employer, students will explore issues from the perspective of the employee and compliance enforcers. Through this course, students will attain practical familiarity with providing legal advice which can be applied in any business context.

This course is designed to provide a practical overview of the main labor law issues that arise in the U.S. workplace. Using a variety of approaches of instruction including mock exercises, outside speakers, writing exercises and analysis of current events, the course will familiarize students with not just the basic concepts underlying the broad range of labor law but cover more advanced topics. As such, the course is appropriate both for students who have taken Labor Law and those new to the topic. To a certain extent, the class topics will be “collectively bargained,” meaning students will actually bargain over class material with the Professor, much as what happens in a union-management relationship.

Class will meet seven times through the semester.

This writing and experiential course will provide students with the opportunity to practice several different types of persuasive writing used in federal litigation. The students will work on a hypothetical case involving an employment discrimination matter. The students will follow the case from the administrative agency level, to the filing of a complaint in federal court, through the discovery process, and culminating in the filing and arguing of a motion for summary judgment. In addition to writing, the students will have the opportunity to interview a client and a witness and to practice their oral advocacy skills in a mock meeting with a partner and a mock hearing. This course will be useful for anyone interested in practicing in federal court and/or pursuing a federal clerkship at the trial court level.