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Preface
Some Thoughts on the Study of Law
Advanced Legal Research
Civil Procedure and Administrative Law
Clinical Law
Commercial & Real Estate Law
Constitutional Law
Criminal Law and Procedure
Disability Law
Environmental Law
Estates and Trusts Law
Health Care Law
Intellectual Property
International Law
Perspectives Courses
Property
Tax and Business Law
Torts
Index |
TORTS
Preparation for Civil Practice with an Emphasis in Tort Law
Some graduates of the University of Alabama School of Law go into law firms which practice tort law exclusively. The majority of those involved in the practice of tort law, however, are members of firms which have torts as a major practice area. Accordingly, this memorandum is written to assist the student who is making curricular choices aimed at preparing him or her for a general civil practice with an emphasis in tort law. The following suggested courses are important in fully preparing one for such a practice. These courses are not listed in the order of their priority in terms of furthering the preparation of the tort practitioner.
The Courses
Beyond the required four hour course in basic tort law, Torts (Law 602), the student should take as many upper level tort law offerings as is consistent with both satisfying the required curriculum and taking those courses appearing on the bar examination. Selection of these specialized tort courses has become all the more important now that basic torts has been reduced from six to four semester hours. These fundamental courses are as follows:
Advanced Torts (Law 749). 2 or 3 hours. This is a course in which students study selected topics prescribed by the professor. These are customarily areas of tort law that, due to time restraints, were not studied in the basic torts course. While this may be offered as a course, it regularly takes the form of a seminar in which students select specialized tort issues on which they write and orally defend significant manuscripts of publishable quality.
Damages (Law 669). 2 or 3 hours. The allotted hours in basic torts is insufficient to explore the complex rules regarding measurement of and limitations on damages. Damages provides students with a working knowledge of damages and measurements in torts, such as personal injury, insurance, and fraud. It also compares tort damages with contract damages and explores procedural aspects of damages recovery.
Products Liability (Law 692). 2 or 3 hours. The law of products liability has expanded at such a rate over the past three decades that the professor in basic torts can do no more than provide a very general introduction to the area. Consequently, the student is well advised to take this survey course in the products liability field.
Insurance Law (Law 675). 2 or 3 hours. Much of the tort lawyer's work over the past several decades has come to intersect with the presence of insurance. Loss and liability insurance, for example, have significant impacts on substantive tort doctrine as well as procedure and settlement. Few tort cases arise in which the tortfeasor is not indemnified under a contract of insurance. Many tort cases, such as those involving bad faith refusal to pay, are lodged by the insured against the insurer.
Equitable and Extraordinary Remedies (Law 701). 2 or 3 hours. Equitable remedies, such as injunctive relief and other basic principles of equity, are surveyed. The course demonstrates how the law of equity may be applied to other areas of substantive law, such as torts, contracts, and property.
Business Crimes and Torts (Law 614). 2 or 3 hours. This survey focuses on criminal, civil, and administrative causes of action concerning a variety of financial wrongs: health care fraud, bank fraud, tax fraud, mail and wire fraud, RICO, money laundering, frauds upon the government, environmental crimes, and seizure of assets.
Business Fraud seminar: Crimes and Torts (Law 784). 2 hours. This seminar focuses on the practical and jurisprudential issues raised by various criminal, civil, and/or administrative causes of action available to resolve financial wrongs, such as RICO, the False Claims Act, exclusion and debarment, and common law offenses and causes of action.
Workers' Compensation (Law 697). 2 or 3 hours. This course gives the student exposure to an area where the common law of liability has been replaced with a statutory, no-fault scheme for recovering less, but more certain, damages arising out of workplace injuries. Most civil tort practitioners handle workers' compensation claims. This is particularly true when the plaintiff is able to circumvent the statutory scheme of compensation and pursue other viable defendants under traditional, common law tort concepts.
Procedure & Skills Courses
Knowing the substantive law is only one component in the delivery of legal services in the tort law area. Practice and procedure subjects are equally important. The following is a list of non-required courses that are procedural or skills-oriented in nature and frequently arise in the proper administration of tort claims.
Procedure Courses
Advanced Evidence (Law 637). 2 or 3 hours. Most tort lawyers acknowledge that a significant part of any case concerns the admissibility of evidence. This particular course, following up on the course in basic evidence (Law 642), is aimed at providing the student with more confidence in comprehensively applying the rules of evidence.
Special Problems in Evidence (Law 736). 2 hours. This is generally taught as a seminar. It is for the student who is very confident that a significant portion of his or her lawyering will involve trial practice. Students select or are assigned an evolving issue in evidence law and then prepare and defend a significant paper (of publishable quality) on that issue.
Federal Jurisdiction (Law 670). 3 hours. Examination of the important problems pertaining to the jurisdiction of, and law applied in, the federal court system. Emphasis is placed on the various bases of jurisdiction in the federal courts, the nature of the federal court system and its position in American government and society, and jurisdictional conflicts between state and federal courts.
Problems in Civil Procedure (Law 636). 2 or 3 hours. See course description, p. 7. This would be particularly valuable to the tort lawyer.
Advanced Civil Procedure (Law 653). 2 or 3 hours. See course description, p. 7. A significant portion of the time devoted to any given lawsuit, but especially civil tort cases, involves procedural considerations, particularly pretrial tactics. This course affords the student an opportunity to study those procedural rules that were not taken up in the basic civil procedure course (Law 608).
Conflict of Laws (Law 667). 3 hours. See course description, p. 6. The increasing mobility of the American citizenry has resulted in a dramatic increase, over the past several decades, in the number of cases in which it must be determined which jurisdiction's law applies to the resolution of the case when the law in the respective jurisdictions is in a state of conflict. A case litigated in one state, for example, may be governed by the law of another state. It is inevitable that the tort lawyer will encounter such "choice-of-law" problems, and this course provides the rules upon which such issues are resolved.
Skills Courses
Legal Counseling and Interviewing (Law 708). 2 hours. If any message comes out of the first year of law study, it is that the application of legal principles is determined by the facts. The most important source for those facts is often one's client. This course is aimed at securing the interviewing skills necessary for securing these facts and the skills necessary for counseling the client in terms of applying the law to the facts.
Alternative Dispute Resolution (Law 705). 2 or 3 hours. The increase in litigation over the past several decades has placed an extraordinary burden upon the courts. One such burden is a significant increase in both the cost of lawsuits and the time bringing them to a conclusion. Accordingly, a movement is well underway to promote the use of other methods for resolving disputes. Among these methods are arbitration and mediation. It is increasingly difficult for any tort lawyer to maintain a healthy practice without being familiar with these alternatives. Students learn by planning for and conducting a variety of role-playing exercises.
Mediation (Law 779). 2 or 3 hours. This course identifies how mediation fits within the existing dispute resolution process; it analyzes the component parts of mediation and analyzes the mutuality of negotiations, as well as analyzing the strategies and hurdles of two-party and multiparty mediations. The course will include a once-a-week lecture, two observations of real cases, and performance of a mock mediation. Each student will be required to prepare a position statement based upon the guidelines developed in the course. There will be two textbooks for this course, one dealing with the art of negotiation and the other dealings with the mediation process itself.
Advanced Legal Research (Law 611). 2 hours. No trait of a good trial lawyer is more dominant than that of being able to find the relevant law. This course provides an opportunity to learn legal resources and research methodology more comprehensively than is afforded during the first year legal writing/research course.
Trial Advocacy I (Law 663). 3 hours. A tort lawyer's education is complete only upon receipt of practical training in trial skills. This is the first of two courses dedicated to practical training in trying cases. No part of such skills training is more important than those formal activities, such as discovery, that precede the trial itself. While this course deals with issues that are confronted during the trial, its emphasis is upon pretrial.
Trial Advocacy II (Law 664). 3 hours. This is the course in which students have the opportunity to participate in the actual trial of cases. This exposure is essential for the tort lawyer.
Clinical Program (Law 665). 3 hours. Students at The University of Alabama are particularly fortunate in that the Law School has an external, live-client clinic located across campus. When many law schools speak of clinic offerings they are referring exclusively to internal, simulated activities such as trial advocacy. Alabama, however, is able to provide its students with hands-on experience in dealing with real clients. While the clinic cases are presently focused upon criminal defense, pension plans, disability litigation, children's rights, student legal issues, and the law of the aging, these provide practical experience common to all cases.
Law Office Practice (Law 688). 2 or 3 hours. Much of a lawyer's work, particularly that of a general civil practitioner, is drafting documents. This course exposes the student to those documents most often encountered in such a practice.
Complementary electives
These courses will directly and effectively complement one's training in tort law.
Consumer Law (Law 628). 2 or 3 hours. This course involves a survey study of the remedies available to the injured or disappointed consumer. In addition to traditional common law remedies, this course deals with consumer rights under both state and federal statutes. This course increases the tort lawyer's awareness that many tort remedies are found in statutes.
Business Organizations (Law 645). 3 hours. See course description, p. 34. The complexity of many business torts makes it imperative that the practitioner understand the organizational structure of the various commercial entities such as partnerships, corporations and limited liability companies. This course provides that background.
Admiralty (Law 687). 3 hours. See course description, p. 7. Torts occurring on navigable streams are customarily governed by admiralty law as administered by the federal courts. Admiralty and maritime law often differ dramatically from the common law of torts. Consequently, this course is particularly important for any student who plans to practice in an area with navigable streams.
Employment Discrimination Law (Law 721). 2 or 3 hours. The caseload of the tort practitioner increasingly includes cases involving discrimination in employment based upon sex, race, age and physical disability. This course affords the student an opportunity to study the primary federal statutes under which these causes of action arise.
Civil Rights Legislation (Law 726). 2 or 3 hours. This course is complementary to Employment Discrimination Law (Law 721). It treats discrimination lawsuits in the nonemployment areas such as education, housing, etc.
Administrative Law (Law 683). 2 or 3 hours. See course description, p. 6. Tort recovery has increasingly required the attorney to practice before governmental agencies. This course deals with the powers and procedures of these agencies, particularly on the federal level.
Trade Regulation (Law 682). 2 or 3 hours. Many significant tort cases arise in the area of unfair business competition or violation of trademark rights. This course gives the student an exposure to this important area.
Environmental Law II (Law 771). 2 or 3 hours. See course description, p. 22. Increasingly, tort lawsuits have involved environmental injuries. This requires that the practitioner be familiar with federal environmental statutes and administrative regulations. This course provides that exposure.
Antitrust Law (Law 684). 2 or 3 hours. See course description, p. 40. Antitrust deals with the rules governing competition in the marketplace. Antitrust claims are thus frequently encountered in commercial litigation as a species of business torts and occasionally in consumer class actions.
Health Care Law (Law 696). 2 or 3 hours. See course description, p. 28. Litigation in the health care industry is increasingly targeted at the corporate enterprises that deliver health care. The Health Care Law course provides helpful background in the organizational structure of health care delivery and finance, as well as providing an introduction to medical malpractice law, ERISA preemption, antitrust law and other litigation-related subjects.
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