First Year
Nebraska Law’s curriculum offers students a traditional foundation in legal analysis and reasoning and a wide range of elective upper-level courses that include hands-on practical experience through clinics and externships. In your first year, students take 30 credit hours designed to provide instruction in core subjects that are fundamental to legal practice: Contracts, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Property, and Torts. These courses help students gain a broad understanding of subjects which not only prepare them for upper-level classes, but also for success on the bar exam and in the practice of law. The year-long Legal Analysis, Writing and Research course focuses on professionalism and ethics in addition to legal research and writing.
Upper-Level
The upper-level curriculum offers a broad array of choices for students as they begin to explore future careers. Students can concentrate in a specialty area, such as litigation skills, business law, solo and small firm practice, intellectual property, space law, environmental law, and so forth. Any student can create an individualized program of study supervised by a professor. Many students also get real-world experience by participating in a clinic or doing an externship. Nebraska Law offers clinics in children's justice, criminal practice, debtor defense, estate planning, first amendment, housing justice, wrongful conviction, and as advisors to entrepreneurs and start-up businesses. In these clinics, students represent real clients under the supervision of a professor.