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Course Registration for First-Year Law Students

First year students do not have to register for classes in the fall. The Registrar’s Office enrolls 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.

Spring 2014 Advance Registration

Spring advance registration opens Monday, October 21.  Please visit Penn InTouch to enter your course requests through Sunday, November 3.  Your spring schedule will be available on Penn InTouch on November 12.

As an overview, first-year students must request enrollment in the 4 required first-year courses (section numbers will vary):

Criminal Law - LAW 503
Constitutional Law - LAW 501
Legal Practice Skills - LAW 510
Legal Practice Skills small section - LAW 512.  

Additionally, first-year students should request enrollment in a regulatory elective and a perspectives elective course.  

The electives for spring 2014 are:

Regulatory Electives (choose one)
Administrative Law 
Bankruptcy 
Legislation 
Public International Law

General Electives (choose one) - please note, joint degree candidates may elect to take a course in the other department in lieu of the Law School general elective course.
Introduction to Intellectual Property
Law and Economics
Law and Society in Japan
Legal Responses to Inequality
Property

We encourage you to review the Advance Registration Instructions (prepared for upper-level students but has helpful information on how the scheduler runs and add/drop, waitlist procedures).

Maximizing 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.  

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 Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 (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 2013 / Spring 2014
  • Academic Advising Resources - 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 theCourse 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