The JD Program In Depth

The Juris Doctor program at UC Hastings is a three-year, full-time education in the law requiring 86 credits and a 2.0 grade point average to qualify for a degree. The legal education you receive at UC Hastings is a window to the breadth and diversity of the law. It provides both a focus on the fundamentals and a wider view to explore special areas of study.

UC Hastings is home to law-related organizations to keep your interest heightened and support programs to keep you on track. You get a practical dimension in skills courses and legal experiences in clinical internships and judicial externships. The real distinction in our legal education program comes from our faculty, whose scholarship and teaching credentials are difficult to surpass anywhere in the nation and whose relationship with students is one of the most congenial and instructive of any law school faculty.UC Hastings has definite advantages. Our 400 entering students are divided into first-year sections of approximately 80, with one class offered in sizes of 40 students, and legal writing given in groups of 15. One hundred twenty-five course offerings are available for students who want to specialize in tax, civil litigation, public interest law, or international and comparative law. The upper-class curriculum has many concentrated studies certificates.

With a sizable faculty of 56 full-time professors and 80 adjuncts, our upper class course offerings include 69 lecture courses, 50 writing seminars, and 16 professional skills courses.

First-year students take legal writing and research and then engage in moot court arguments with a written brief and computer-aided research. Before students graduate, they must write a substantial paper on a legal topic.