Important Dates
- Spring 2023 advance registration - October 31 through November 13; schedules available November 22
- Add/drop takes place during the first two weeks of class in both the fall and spring semesters.
- Law School Academic Calendar for 2022-2023
Spring 2023 Curriculum for Advance Registration and Add/Drop
- Course List Spreadsheet (course name, faculty, course number, credits, notes, meeting time)
- Block Schedules:
- Student Projects: Register for an Independent Student Project (Independent Study, Supervised Research, Research Assistant, and Teaching Assistant)
- Graduate Courses at Penn: Enroll in a graduate course at Penn
Students select their courses using Path@Penn.
During the advance registration period, your course requests are being collected. Schedules are created after the advance registration period closes. Your chance of being placed in a course is not affected by when you enter your requests.
Spring 2023 advance registration is open 10/31-11/13 and schedules post on 11/22. Courses will be available in Canvas on 11/23.
Enter course requests in Path@Penn.
- First-year JD students may request enrollment in spring courses only.
- Second- and third-year JD students request enrollment in fall courses in the summer; spring course requests are entered in November.
- Link here to the University’s Course Registration info site: Course Registration | Penn Student Registration & Financial Services| Penn Srfs (upenn.edu)
- Please review these quick reference guides on using Path@Penn:
Review the Law School’s registration materials carefully. Use the block schedule (linked above) to avoid time conflicts and review the course descriptions in the Course Finder.
Request a full complement of Law classes, up to or even above your desired credit load. Be sure to choose alternate courses in case your primary requests cannot be satisfied.
About two weeks after advance registration closes, the scheduler will post your preliminary schedule. You will be enrolled in no more than 17 credits. 17 is the max credits per term.
How Does the Scheduler Work?
- Please review these quick reference guides on using Path@Penn:
- The scheduler works through your course requests in rank order.
- The scheduler will not enroll you in courses with time conflicts.
- The above steps are repeated for each course request until you reach your desired credit load (17 credit max) or until all of your requests have been considered.
How Can I Get the Courses I Want?
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Take advantage of advance registration.
- If you fail to submit your course requests during advance registration, you will be able to enroll in open courses, using Path@Penn, after schedules come out for that term.
- Request courses in the order of their importance to you.
- Request alternate courses requests for each primary request.
- Avoid time conflicts. (Note that an alternate request may be in time conflict with its primary request, however.)
- Do not enter a course more than once. (If you can’t get into a course using a higher ranked number, you won’t have success getting into it using a lower ranked number.)
Holds on Your Account: You will not be able to enter course requests if you are on financial or student health hold. The Law School cannot lift these holds, so it is up to you to take the following step(s).
- Financial holds: Resolve your University financial obligations by calling the Student Financial Information Center at 215-898-1988.
- Student health holds: The University’s Student Health Services requires that all full-time students are fully immunized. Any student not complying with these requirements will have a hold placed on your account.
Student Schedules
- You will be notified by the Registrar’s Office when your final schedule is available on Path@Penn, approximately two weeks after the close of advance registration. Once schedules are available, you can view your Law courses on Canvas; non-law courses are not hosted on the Law Canvas site.
Other Notes on Scheduling
- Keep a copy of your course requests!
- Each school at Penn has a priority scheme that gives preference to students based on their division and year of study. The Law School gives enrollment priority to 3Ls and LLMs (with a few exceptions).
- The Registrar may decide to cap the number of students by class category (i.e., 2L, 3L, LLM, ML) after discussion with the faculty member and Deputy Deans. We will let students know as soon as possible by posting it under the “Notes” column on the Course List spreadsheet.
- Add/drop/swap is open for you to make changes to your schedule during a set period of time after your schedule comes out and through the first two weeks of the term (for semester long courses). The add/drop period ends after the first week of classes for quarter courses (that meet half of the semester) and for clinics and externships. For classes that meet over a special session, you can request to drop the class by emailing the Law Registrar’s Office - reg@law.upenne.du, after the first class.
- During add/drop, you can add open courses and drop courses using Path@Penn.
- Add/Drop/Swap Handout (.pdf) - resource prepared by the Office of the University Registrar
- After the end of add/drop, drops for all courses require the permission of the instructor. If you drop any activity (course, seminar, etc.) after October 15 (Fall) / February 15 (Spring), a W (withdrew) will be noted on your transcript next to the activity that was dropped.
- You cannot enroll in a course after the add/drop period has concluded.
Any course, seminar, clinic, or externship that reaches its max capacity will generate a waitlist. The waitlist comprises students who requested the activity as a PRIMARY request during advance registration and were closed out. It is important to note that alternate requests do not land on the waitlist.
The waitlist is generated from the scheduler results and students are listed in priority order of the initial primary request.
We conduct all waitlist activity via email.
We will not take any requests to add to a waitlist and students do not have to confirm their place on a waitlist.
We will work through waitlists each day. We typically send out invitations to enroll via email each day after 12:00 pm. You will have until noon the following day to accept your offer to join the class and claim the permit.
Once we have worked through the full waitlist, and if spots are still available in the course, we will open the course for students to register directly in Path@Penn.
First-Year Students
- 1L Block Schedules: Fall 2022 / Spring 2023
- 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.
Spring 2023
You have the opportunity to request enrollment in two spring electives, choosing one course from the regulatory elective group and one course from the general elective group. (The Registrar’s Office will enroll you in your required spring courses: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and Legal Practice Skills.)
Regulatory Electives (choose one as a primary + one as an alternate)
Administrative Law
Antidiscrimination Law
Bankruptcy
Environmental Law
International Law
Internet Law
General Electives (choose one as a primary + one as an alternate)*
Access to Justice
Intro to Intellectual Property Law and Policy
Judicial Decision-Making
Law and Economics
Law and Society in Japan
National Security Law
Privacy
Property
- Course Finder: a tool to search and review the curriculum and review course descriptions, course concentration areas, and skills training options
- Course Evaluations: Course evaluations are available through MyCourses. Please note that evaluations for 1L required courses are not available online.
- Exam Schedules & Policies and Procedures
Upper-Level Students
- Course List Spreadsheet (course name, faculty, course number, credits, notes, meeting time)
- Block Schedules: Fall 2022 UL Block Schedule / Spring 2023 UL Block Schedule
- Student Projects: Register for an Independent Student Project (Independent Study, Supervised Research, Research Assistant, and Teaching Assistant)
- Graduate Courses at Penn: Enroll in a Non-law Course
- Course Finder: Search and review the curriculum and review course descriptions, course concentration areas, and skills training options
- Course Evaluations: Online evaluations can be found linked from myCourses.
- Advance registration scheduler archives - below!
Advance Registration Scheduler Results (lists closed courses, max enrollment, and actual enrollment):
Master in Law Students
Master in Law courses are specifically designed to offer background and expertise to students and staff who are not pursuing a traditional law degree (JD, LLM, LLCM, SJD).
Penn graduate and upper-class undergraduate students can request enrollment in upper-level JD courses (first-year courses are for JD students only) on a space available basis.
Review ML curriculum and registration forms here: Master in Law Course Offerings