Year after year, students report that their academic experience in the first year at Columbia Law School is one of the most positive and intellectually stimulating periods of their law school career. We believe that the first year of law school -- our Foundation Curriculum -- must be a time of opening new horizons, rather than one of stress and conformity, where students are encouraged to develop their understanding of how law works within a society. After learning a bit more about what awaits our entering 1L students, we hope you will begin to understand why Columbia's Foundation Curriculum is so unique.

Legal Methods has served to inaugurate generations of Columbians to legal research, analysis, and writing in a manner at once intellectually rigorous and professionally supportive. The "centerpiece" of the Foundation Curriculum, it is an ungraded course which is completed prior to matriculation in almost all of the remaining first-year courses. It serves as an introduction to legal institutions and processes, and is consistently taught by some of Columbia Law School's leading scholars and most respected professors.

Legal Practice Workshop provides training in the analysis of legal problems and in the hands-on use of a variety of legal materials. Through animated discussion and written assignments, Legal Practice Workshop I represents the perfect complement to Legal Methods and, as such, represents the only course taken in conjunction with it at the onset of the 1L year.  Students complete Legal Practice Workshop II during the Spring semester.

The remainder of the Fall semester is rounded out by:

• Civil Procedure which establishes the fundamental aspects of the civil litigation process in the United States
• Contracts which provides a thorough introduction to the law of contracts, including the examination of fraud and the bargaining process, among other things
• Torts which introduces our students to non-contractual wrongs for which private compensation is sought under the common law.

The Spring semester of the first year at Columbia Law School is comprised of both required and elective courses, as well as the opportunity to argue a case through Columbia's Moot Court component. The three curricular requirements each serve to provide a working framework to better understand the substantive nature of Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and Property and their respective functions in our contemporary society.

Every first-year student is also required to write a brief and argue his or her case orally by participating in Foundation Year Moot Court.  This experience is usually a rather exciting one for our 1L students and represents, for some, their first practical exposure to the dynamics of a courtroom. Students may complete this requirement by choosing to participate in one of several equivalent moot court competitions (e.g., the Phillip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition), following approval from the Faculty Director of the Moot Court Program. 

Elective Courses

Following both the constructive recommendations of former Columbia 1L students, and the subsequent recent approval by current Columbia Faculty, first-year students are now able to choose one elective course during the Spring semester. Though unconventional with respect to our peer institutions, Columbia Law School remains dedicated to providing our students with the opportunity to explore the vast breadth and depth of our curriculum as early as their 1L year.

Recent elective course offerings include:

• Critical Legal Thought
• Foundations of the Regulatory State
• Law and Contemporary Society
• Law and Economics
• Law and Social Science
• Law, Culture, and Notions of Justice
• Lawyering Across Multiple Legal Orders
• Legislation
• Principles of Intellectual Property
• Regulation: Decentralization and Globalization

For detailed course descriptions, please click here.