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Graduation Requirements

J.D. Graduation Requirements

Limitations on Number of Non-Traditional Credits

Some of the courses are subject to certain limitations:

  1. Only 15 credits in the aggregate may be earned by a student for non-law course work, only 15 credits in the aggregate may be earned for externships, and only 20 credits in the aggregate may be earned for externships and non-law course work combined.
  2. Only 6 credits in the aggregate may be earned by a student for Law 600 C, D, E, and F (independent study, journal editing, moot court).
  3. Only 12 credits in the aggregate may be earned in any calendar academic year for Law E500, Law 600, and seminars, no more than 8 of these credits may be supervised by one faculty member, and no more than 6 may be earned in any one quarter. A calendar academic year begins with Summer Quarter and ends with the following Spring Quarter.
  4. Some courses in the Law School are offered on a Credit/No Credit basis. There is no maximum on non-graded course credits after the first year. However, it should be noted that membership in the Order of the Coif, the national honor society for lawyers (top 10 percent), is not available to persons who take more than 25 percent of their law school work on a non-graded basis.

Required First-Year Courses

[A] First Year Courses

New students enter only in the Autumn Quarter and must take the full-time load of required first-year courses. Because of the heavy course load, first-year students are strongly discouraged from attempting to work on even a part-time basis. The student's first-year requirements are as follows:

Required Upper Level Courses

[B] Second- and Third-Year Courses

To graduate, a student must complete the following requirements during their second and third years of law school:

J.D. Residence Requirement

To be eligible for the Juris Doctor degree, a student must complete at least eight quarters of study in residence. A quarter of residence credit is given for each quarter during which a student successfully completes at least 12 credits of work. Two quarters, in each of which a student earns fewer than 12 but no less than 7 credits, may be combined to produce a quarter of residence credit.

A full-time student in the Law School is one who is registered for a minimum of 12 credits per quarter. To complete the J.D. degree over three years, however, a student must average 15 credits per quarter. No student may register for fewer than 12 or more than 16 credits per quarter without the approval of the Associate Dean for Students & Academic Life or the Associate Dean for Academic Administration. Permission to register for more than 16 credits is granted only to students whose records demonstrate the capacity to assume such a program of study successfully. Students may not enroll in more than 20 credits per quarter.

For students in concurrent degree programs, a full quarter of residence credit will be granted for a quarter in which a student successfully completes a total of at least 12 credits of law courses and courses applied to the concurrent degree, regardless of whether the student will receive credit toward the J.D. degree for the non-law courses. A partial quarter of residence credit will be granted if a student successfully completes a total of at least 7 credits of law and concurrent degree courses, and two partial quarters may be combined to produce a full quarter of residence credit.