Concentrating on Law School: Creating Pre-Law School Curriculum at ASU

"Concentrating on Law School: Creating Pre-Law Curriculum at ASU" partners with the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions to create a fifteen-credit certificate program at Arizona State University to help students prepare for law school. The certificate, Legal and Policy Studies, incorporates sixty-two courses from twenty-two different disciplines at the university. The program aims to supplement a student's primary major and field of interest while simultaneously providing a foundation of public policy to better understand the subject of law and students' surrounding community. The law school preparation program is designed based on a philosophy of accessibility to rigorous preparation by students of all socioeconomic backgrounds and high student discretion. The Legal and Policy Studies certificate, if implemented at the university, will be the most interdisciplinary pre-law preparation program in the nation. The project is comprised of multiple parts: research conducted to identify law school preparation resources already offered at ASU, comparative research of academic programs at other universities, input from both law school-hopeful undergraduates and current ASU Law 1Ls into the program's formation, and creation of the certificate program. The certificate also includes a mock law class specifically for undergraduates (PAF 499), which would be introduced to the university in AY 2019-2020. The thesis recommends that the class be similarly structured to a 1L law class regarding rigor, cold-calling culture, and introduction to basic skills imperative to law school success (i.e. how to brief cases, Bluebook/Westlaw basics). The thesis also encourages the Watts College to hire an faculty member to teach the mock law class with a background teaching 1L courses and a general familiarity with the structure and culture of a first year law course.