Instruction in the first year embraces a variety of course work that introduces the beginning law student to the vast array of legal subjects. Particularly mindful of a legal education to provide more skill-centered experience while students are still in school, Miles Law School's first-year required course work in Lawyering Skills provides students the opportunity to explore the relationship between legal analysis and the lawyering tasks such as effective, oral advocacy, legal research, and client interviewing and counseling. Students achieve this through course work as well as working on simulated cases in both a courtroom and law office setting taking depositions, interviewing witnesses, and preparing case memoranda. We will take a special section of Lawyering Skills that will present skills instruction in the context of public interest practice.
Students also are required to take courses in subjects which historically have dominated legal thought: civil procedure; constitutional law; property; and torts. Instruction focuses on analysis of appellate cases, the traditional source of the common lawyer's understanding of the law. Instructors are likely to employ a wide range of pedagogical techniques ranging from the Socratic dialogue, to lecture, to small group discussion.
To foster a sense of community and create an environment of mutual support, the education provided by this shared experience has long remained a source of intellectual excitement and close friendships for students. Faculty teaching these small sections employ teaching methods that increase participation and provide students with essential feedback on their progress.

The First -Year Curriculum

Contracts
This is a course about the law governing private agreements. The course analyzes the criteria for determining whether or not a particular promise or voluntary agreement is legally enforceable and surveys the major legal issues affecting enforceable agreements. Theses issues include the questions of when a contract becomes binding and what persons acquire rights under a contract, the conditions under which performance is required or excused, what constitutes breach of contract. Attention will be given throughout the course to the general problems of interpreting contract language, the role of contracts in a market society, the conflict between the commercial need for certainty and the demands of individual fairness, and the relationship between contract laws and other areas such as torts, property, and restitution.

Lawyering Skills: Theory and Practice
During the year students interview and counsel clients, do legal research, and draft legal memoranda and contracts. In the second semester, students prepare a case for trial. They develop a discovery plan, interview and depose witnesses and argue a motion before a judge. Throughout the entire year, the course focuses on the principles of legal analysis and argumentation as well as lawyering techniques.

Criminal Law
This course covers selected topics in substantive criminal law: principles underlying the definition of crime (such as the requirements of actus reus and mens rea) and the general doctrines such as ignorance of fact and ignorance of law, causation, attempt, complicity and conspiracy. Principles of justification and excuse are examined with particular attention to the doctrines of necessity, intoxication, insanity, diminished capacity and automatism. The substantive offense of homicide is extensively reviewed, as are from time to time other offenses, such as theft. Emphasis is placed on the basic theory of the criminal law and the relationship between doctrines and the various justifications for imposition of punishment.

Property
An analysis of property as a social institution and as a dynamic system for recognizing and protecting competing claims to resources. Major problem areas to be studied include the historical development of various kinds of interests in property. Housing, landlord and tenant, public and private land use, planning and development, and the sale and financing of real estate.

Torts
This course focuses on personal injury law as it has developed within the Angelo-American legal tradition. In particular, the concept of negligence and the refinements of negligence law will be extensively considered. The doctrine of intentional torts will be examined. Contemporary rules and strict liability will be carefully studied, because of both their intrinsic importance and their theoretical implications. Treating the need for victim compensation as a societal problem, the course will deal with alternatives to the tort system such as no-fault. Throughout the course, there will be an effort to identify the basic goals that our tort system achieves, or should achieve.

Civil Procedure
This is a course about the processes that courts follow in deciding disputes in non-criminal cases. It deals with the way in which conflicts are framed for courts, the stages through which litigation goes, the division of power among the various decision-makers in the legal system and between the state and federal courts, the territorial limitations on the exercise of the judicial power, the principles that define the consequences of a decision once a court has finished with a case, and special disputants. Throughout the course, considerable attention will be devoted to the ways in which our beliefs about fairness (in particular those embodied in the U.S. Constitution) shape the design of the process.

Constitutional Law
This course examines ways in which the United States Constitution (a) distributes power among the various units of government in the American political system, and (b) limits the exercise of those powers. The course considers two sets of structural limitations of government: the division between the Nation and the States in the federal system, and the separation of the powers among the three branches (legislative, executive, and judicial) of the national government. It also considers the Civil War Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th) as limits on the states and as sources of congressional power. A major focus throughout is the proper role of the judiciary in limiting the action of other branches of the government.

First-Year Public Interest Seminar
This seminar is a noncredit, first-year course required of all students. Through reading, field work and class discussions, students will become familiar with basic issues facing lawyers engaged in public policy formulation. Specific topic will include: problem identification and construction; client identification and loyalty; the analysis of service delivery systems; and grantsmanship. Housing discrimination litigation will be used as a thematic backdrop and ongoing case study.

UCC:
Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code dealing with transactions in goods or contracts for the sale of goods. The principles of personal property law, the rights and duties of the buyer and seller; passage of title; risk of loss; warranty obligation; reproductions; breach; excuse; sellers remedies; buyers remedies. Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code deals with transactions which are founded on a security interest or agreement. Creation and perfection of a security interest; priority problems; bankruptcy liens; proceeds; default; bulk sales. Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code deal with commercial paper. The Introduction to instruments; requirements of negotiability; liability between parties to an instrument; holder in due course; check collection process; relationship between a bank and its customer.

LEGAL ETHICS:
A study of the usages and customs among members of the legal profession, involving their moral and professional duties to one another, to clients, to the public, and to the courts.

LEGAL RESEARCH:
Designed for the development of basic legal research and legal writing skills. The course consists of lectures and work in the library as to the nature and use of all types of law books with problems and assignments requiring practical application of research methods.

EQUITY:
The system of rules and principles which originated in England as an alternative o the harsh rules of common law and which were based on what was fair in a particular situation. History of equity; powers of courts of equity; equitable remedies, defenses to equitable relief.

EVIDENCE:
The rule governing the admission of proof during the fact finding stage of a legal dispute. Rules and standards for the presentation of evidence; relevancy; authentication; hearsay; privileges; presumptions and burdens of proof; federal rules of evidence.

CRIMINAL PROCEDURE:
The procedural steps through which a criminal case proceeds. Examination of the criminal justice system; right to counsel; 6th amendment; due process; 4th amendment; search and seizure; exclusionary rule; probable cause; 5th amendment; privilege against self-incrimination; police interrogation.

INCOME TAX:
A study of the tax levied by the U. S. government on an individual's income; gross income; gain or loss dividends; business and personal deductions; alternative tax methods; handling taxes of partnership, estate and trusts; figuring the corporation tax; overview of federal tax structure.

ESTATE AND GIFT TAX:
A study of the excise taxes on the right to transfer property at death, and the right to transfer property as a gift during the taxpayer's life. Gross estate; valuation of estate property; deductions from gross estate; what constitutes a gift; valuation of gifts; deductions and credits; figuring the tax; procedure for filing returns.

WILLS AND TRUSTS:
The law dealing with the passing of a decedent's property at death to survivors. Interstate succession; execution and revocation of wills; limitations on testamentary power, will substitutes, probate and contest of wills; administration and distribution of estates. The study of the fiduciary relationship which exists when a property right is held by one party for the benefit or use of another. Creation of express trusts, charitable trusts, resulting and constructive trusts; powers and duties of the trustee; alteration or termination of the trusts; remedies of beneficiaries.

PRACTICE COURT:
The first semester of the course consists of in-class instruction of trial techniques. Preparation for trial; jury selection; opening statement; direct examination; exhibits; cross-examination; closing arguments; objections. The second semester, students act as criminal defense lawyers or prosecuting attorneys in criminal cases, or lawyers representing the plaintiff or defendant in civil cases. The court is presided over by a professor who acts a judge.