Designed to introduce first year students to the essential analytical skills they will need to prepare for their upper level courses, the first-year curriculum emphasizes the many sources of law that govern our society--judge-made common law, statutory law and regulatory law as developed by governmental agencies--and the two major systems of law in the United States--the civil justice system and the criminal justice system.

Students in their first year will develop case-reading skills, the ability to read and interpret statutory and regulatory materials, and a mastery of the fundamental principles of the traditional first-year subjects, Contracts, Torts, Property, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law and Criminal Law.