Prelaw, a National Jurist publication, recently listed Gonzaga University School of Law as one of the most innovative law schools in the country (see story).

This recognition was based on the new and innovative curriculum that will be inaugurated with our Fall 2009 1L class.

The changes to the curriculum that impressed Prelaw were adopted by the Gonzaga Law faculty in May, 2008. The revisions were adopted to ensure that the institution is delivering on its mission promise to provide students with an excellent legal education informed by its humanistic, Jesuit, and Catholic traditions and values.

Under the new curriculum, the first-year program will contain six separate doctrinal courses totaling 22 credit hours -- four credit hours of Legal Research & Writing, and four credit hours split evenly between two new Skills and Professionalism Labs.

The six doctrinal courses include Civil Procedure, Contracts, Property, Torts, Criminal Law, and a new course titled Perspectives on the Law. The latter has been added to the fall semester, while the three-credit Criminal Law course has been moved from its traditional place in the fall semester to spring.

The most significant change in the first-year program will be the addition of two new Skills and Professionalism Labs. These labs will be bundled with two doctrinal courses each semester, and will focus on skill sets needed in two broad areas of practice, and will emphasize the professional values and habits that provide a foundation for the ethical practice of law.

During fall semester of the first year, Gonzaga students will take a two-credit Skills and Professionalism Lab that will use the rules of Civil Procedure and the substantive law of Torts to teach them the skills they will need to be litigators.

During spring semester, students will take a two-credit Skills and Professionalism Lab that will use the substantive law of Contracts and Property to teach them the skills they will need to be transactional lawyers.

Each of these labs will be small sections of no more than 30 students, and will be taught by both full-time and adjunct faculty.

The most significant change in the second-year curriculum is the expansion and revision of the two LR&W classes. Staying true to the theme of "breaking down the silos within the academic program" established by the first-year curriculum revisions, LR&W III and IV will be reconstituted to build upon not only what students learned in their first-year LR&W classes (which has always been the practice), but also upon what they will have covered in their two Skills and Professionalism Labs.

Following on the first-year fall semester Skills and Professionalism Lab, LR&W III will focus on the research and writing skills lawyers need for a litigation practice. In the spring semester of the second year, LR&W IV will follow the transactional Skills and Professionalism Lab by taking students through assignments that require the production of a variety of transactional documents (e.g., letters of intent, contracts, wills or trusts, etc.).

The only change in the third-year curriculum will be a new requirement that all students earn at least three credits in either the school’s clinic or its externship program. The impetus behind this change is to assure that each student graduates with some experience in applying their classroom knowledge and simulated skill set in an actual law practice setting.