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1st Semester Classes

This semester, I’m taking Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law,  Civil Procedure and Critical and Legal Reasoning (CLR), which is Northwestern’s writing requirement.  Here is a brief synopsis of each of the courses. I’ll note that although I’m in the JD-MBA program, I am taking courses with all of the law students this semester.

Contracts
Contract law is the study of promises, exchanged between individuals and/or organizations. In the class, we’ll learn a lot about contract theory, and discuss things such as breach of contracts, consent, disclosure, incentives, and contract terms. This is a very useful class for JD-MBAs, and a subject matter I’ll use in most any of my career path I undertake.

Torts
In torts, we discuss civil wrongdoings NOT arising from contracts. Doing so, we’re looking at how courts determine settlements and perform payout valuations for different crimes, the latter which is often of interest to JD-MBAs. This class is more theoretical in nature, and while it may not directly relate to many of my potential career paths, it does give you practice reasoning through problems, synthesizing details of long cases, and assessing qualitative and quantitative information to come up with a solution.

Criminal Law
This course covers topics such as criminal responsibility, the significance of actions, intent, causation, and the rationale of punishment. The great thing about this class is that you spend the entire semester talking about really hard topics, navigating through gray areas without right and wrong answers, and taking a stand as you have to make argument about these issues. These are very useful skills in any profession and are abilities you must have to be a good leader.

Civil Procedure
This course is about the rules and standards that courts follow. It’s more black and white than the other courses, but still useful. For those interested in law, you need to know everything in this course. For those headed to business, you’ll get a lot of experience collecting data, focusing on details, getting the right answer, and understanding the importance of using a framework. Both consulting firms and law firms have a large appreciation for process and for frameworks.

Critical and Legal Writing
In this course, we’ll learn the writing skills that lawyers need to practice law – researching relevant information, analyzing complex problems, and writing and oral skills to present those solutions to a client. The ability to articulate and to persuade are broad skills necessary to be a leader in any career.

Overall
Overall, my law school courses not only teach you about the law but also help you broad develop a set of professional skills–the ability to communicate effectively, the ability to address multiple, conflicting points of view, and the capacity to solve complex problems. This proves the law degree is quite versatile and the skills and knowledge I gain from these classes will be very useful, both inside and outside of the legal profession.

As a reference point for those who want to go into business, consulting firms tend to hire lots of law school graduates. For example, I’ve seen estimates that Mckinsey has more than 300 consultants with law degrees. These folks have joined the firm at various points in their careers and all on the track to partner positions, if not a partner already.

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