The purpose of the Juris Doctor program is to teach students the laws of men in the light of the laws of God. It seeks to provide a rigorous and intellectually challenging legal education that prepares students to function in the wide range of activities that occupy a lawyer's professional life. Consistent with the Aims of a BYU Education, it strives to be spiritually strengthening, intellectually enlarging, and character building, leading to lifelong learning and service.
The program's goals and expected learning outcomes are:
To teach the fundamental principles of law, using a predominantly theoretical approach.
To teach the basic skills involved in lawyering, including legal analysis and reasoning, problem solving, legal research, oral and written communication, counseling, negotiation, litigation and alternative dispute resolution, recognizing and resolving ethical dilemmas, and other skills.
To promote loyalty to and understanding of the Constitution of the United States.
To foster an enlightened devotion to the rule of law.
To approach the law from a scholarly and objective point of view, with the largest latitude in the matters being considered.
To incorporate religious, ethical, and moral values in the instruction.
Because lawyers play an important role in forming and implementing social, economic, and public policy, the Law School must provide broad training. This breadth cuts across the lines of isolated fields and brings the insights of other disciplines into the study of law.
The specific objective of the curriculum is to maximize the students' mastery of legal reasoning and legal method, while teaching a core of the basic substantive rules of the law and imparting an appreciation for its institutions and traditions.
Students are taught to analyze complex factual situations; to separate the relevant from the irrelevant; and to reason inductively, deductively, and by analogy. They learn to recognize the potential inapplicability of established rules to situations materially different from those in which the rules were developed.
Students are also schooled in the arts of written and oral advocacy, draftsmanship, and negotiation. In addition, they learn to recognize the deficiencies in existing rules and to contribute to the creation of new rules, advocating positions with clarity, persuasion, and honor.
The development of these skills must embrace the great variety of activities in which lawyers engage. Lawyers are probably best known for their work in the private sector, representing clients in and out of the courtroom in the prevention and resolution of conflicts. In addition, lawyers have traditionally occupied key roles in forming and executing policy at all levels of government. The Law School prepares its graduates to function as responsible, well-informed participants in the public and private affairs of a society in which the law plays a vital role in setting and regulating standards.
Legal education at this school does not include the sponsorship of particular political objectives, except as may flow from loyalty to the Constitution and from a commitment to the highest ideals of personal character and individual liberty as the foundation upon which an enduring legal system must rest.
Legal training involves the learning of skills by practice. The student must be an active participant in that process. Because a variety of legal skills must be developed, several methods are used.
The case method is the basic tool of traditional American legal education. Employed more in formal first-year classes than in other courses, this method assumes that students have "briefed" a series of assigned cases before coming to class. The cases are generally verbatim excerpts from the judicial opinions of state and federal appellate courts, which provide a summary of the factual and procedural context of a case as well as statements of law.
The teacher calls on the students to respond in a stimulating question-and-answer dialogue, frequently involving several class members and often including more questions than answers. The learning experience occurs not only in the interchange between teacher and students but also among the students themselves. Students soon learn that a key to gaining maximum benefit from these interchanges is the ability to listen with discrimination.
This process, applied skillfully day after day by expert teachers and by students possessing a sense of awareness and curiosity, hones the minds of students, develops their respect for facts, and creates a sensitivity to essential differences among issues, policies, and reasons.
Effective student participation in this process requires intensive and consistent daily preparation.
In a portion of the first-year courses, and in later courses, students are given practical legal problems. These problems may involve the drafting of legal documents, the forming of a course of action for a hypothetical client, or the creating of a solution to a challenging legal question to which no institutional source of law has yet given an answer.
Such problems may require the effort of one student for a few days, or they may involve a team of students who spend several weeks on a problem.
The problem-solving approach to legal education can be most effectively implemented in courses taught in small sections, allowing the teacher to give individual feedback to each student. Because of the importance of such individual attention, the curriculum is designed so that each student participates in at least one first-year course as a member of a small section.
By the time students reach their third year, and sometimes earlier, they will be prepared to engage in significant legal research in selected areas of specialization. A primary source of such experience will be seminars taught informally in small groups by professors who are experts in the selected subjects. Frequently a student will be expected to defend his or her seminar paper before classmates under circumstances that provide lively and constructive discussion.
All second and third year students will be required to complete a substantial writing project. This project, completed under close faculty supervision, will utilize the writing and reasoning skills students will have developed in the course of their legal studies.
Of increasing importance in legal education is the role of practical, on-the-job training. The Law School provides opportunities for students to develop practical skills in three main programs: externships, LAWHELP seminars, and simulation courses.
Through the externship program students may work for judges, agencies, or law firms and earn credit while gaining "real world" experience. Students are frequently placed with public defenders, legal services, city and county attorneys, judges, attorneys general, and guardians ad litem. They receive one credit for each 50 hours of work. During the summer, students may complete externships across the country or even in foreign countries.
LAWHELP seminars include a one-credit course on the topic, together with a one-credit practical experience externship. The LAWHELP seminars will include Elder Law, Domestic Violence Intervention, Domestic Relations, Mediation, Immigration, Child Advocacy, Public Lands & Natural Resources, Advanced Mediation, Advanced Community Lawyering, Judicial Tribal Courts and Appellate Courts. Training in the development of practical skills is also provided by well-developed simulated courses in civil, criminal, appellate, and nonlitigation situations. The Law School maintains a complete audiovisual facility that allows students to self-critique and review with the professor.
A high percentage of law students and law faculty at BYU speak foreign languages and have lived abroad. As a result, interest in international legal studies and careers is very high. Although most American lawyers who practice international law are members of American law firms and live in the United States, some work with American firms while living in other countries, some are employed by the U.S. government or international organizations, and a few are members of foreign law firms.
Whatever the professional setting in which law students intend to practice, the faculty at the J. Reuben Clark Law School believe that all law students should be better prepared to serve in a "globalized" society. The Law School offers a wide range of both foundational and specialized courses in public and private international law, as well as opportunities for enrichment from other departments of the university.
The Law School's master's degree (LLM) program in American and comparative legal studies for foreign lawyers gives JD students at BYU the chance to associate with and learn from practicing attorneys from all over the world. BYU law students also successfully compete in the Jessup international law moot court competition. To broaden opportunities for careers in international law, the Law School Career Services staff works hard to identify summer employment and externships, as well as full-time professional employment positions.
