Students will rarely be able to take all the courses listed in a given pathway—nor should they. There are many specializations within a given practice area. Further, a pathway may list several relevant courses even though students can largely obtain the needed skills by taking just one of those courses. For this reason, it is important to consult the subject overviews where we try to explain the significance of each course when its relevance to particular career paths is not intuitive.

For most subjects, we lay out the pathways in three stages. The progression through the three stages takes into account whether the course is required, whether the course has any prerequisites, and how important or foundational the course is to the practice of law in that field. Nevertheless, courses may be particularly important to some specializations in a practice area but not others. For this reason, always make sure to consult the subject overview to fully understand the importance of a given class and the nature of the progression in a given pathway.

For select subjects, we believe that the regular three-stage progression is not ideal for curricular design. In those instances, the subject overview will explain how we organized the pathway.

Not necessarily. The progression of courses on the pathway is a recommendation for career training purposes. Students, however, must balance career development with the need to prepare for the bar exam by taking courses tested on the bar. Additionally, scheduling considerations could impact a student’s course selection process.

Please note that Legal Research & Writing (LRW) I and LRW II are not listed on the pathways because you can assume that the writing, research, and analytical skills taught in these courses are beneficial to every practice area. The pathways do not include Professional Responsibility for analogous reasons.