Course Registration for First-Year Law Students
FALL 2017:
First year students do not have to register for classes in the fall; the Registrar’s Office will enroll first-year students in courses by section (Section 1, Section 2, and Section 3). All first year students are required to take: Civil Procedure, Torts, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Contracts, and Legal Practice Skills (a yearlong course), as well as a regulatory elective and a general elective, taken in the spring. Students are required to register for spring courses during advance registration (in October). More on spring registration below…
Spring 2018:
Spring advance registration opens Monday, October 30 and closes on November 12. Please visit Penn InTouch to enter your course requests. Your spring schedule will be available on Penn InTouch on November 21.
Here are the steps you should follow:
1) Request enrollment in a regulatory elective and a general elective course.
The spring 2018 electives are:
Regulatory Electives (choose one as a primary + an alternate) -
Administrative Law
Bankruptcy
Environmental Law
International Law
Internet Law
Legislation
General Electives (choose one as a primary + an alternate) -
International Environmental Law
Intro to Intellectual Property Law and Policy
Intro to Philosophy of Law
Judicial Decision-Making
Law and Society in Japan
Property
Reproductive Rights and Justice
[Joint degree candidates may elect to take a course in the other department in lieu of the Law School general elective course]
2) Request enrollment in your 4 required spring courses (section numbers will vary):
Constitutional Law
Criminal Law
Legal Practice Skills
Legal Practice Skills small section
Maximize your chance of getting into your electives: we suggest you enter the Regulatory Elective as your first primary request (with an alternate), followed by your General Elective (with an alternate), followed by your required courses. Be sure to enter the correct section of your required courses. Courses and course numbers can be found in the First-Year Course List.
Review the Advance Registration Instructions (prepared for upper-level students but has helpful information on how the scheduler runs and add/drop, waitlist procedures).
During advance registration your course requests are being collected. Courses are not scheduled until the advance registration period is over. Your chance of being placed in a course is not affected by when you enter your requests; however, we suggest that you not wait until the deadline to enter your requests.
Resources for Reviewing the Curriculum
- First Year Course List - by section.
- Course/Seminar/Clinic/Co-Curricular Listing - each term is tabbed at the bottom of the excel spreadsheet; first-year courses are listed at the top of the spreadsheet.
- 1L Block Schedules: Fall 2017/ Spring 2018
- Academic Advising Resources - Curricular Compass and other resources on navigating the course selection process and planning of your legal education.
- Course Finder: to search and review the curriculum; review course descriptions, course concentration areas, and skills training options.
- Course Evaluations: Course evaluations are available on the Course Finder during advance registration and add/drop. Please note that evaluations for 1L required courses are not available on-line. Hard copies of the course evaluations are available in the Registrar’s Office throughout the year. Additionally, grade distributions are available in the Registrar’s Office for your review.
- Advance Registration Instructions, for the upper-level (2L, 3L and LLM) students. You may find this information helpful when making your spring elective course requests.
- Exam Schedules & Policies and Procedures
