SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER

Southern University is a historically black state university. The Law Center's mission is to provide legal educational opportunites to a diverse and racially balanced student body and maintain its historic tradition of providing legal educational opportunities to under-represented racial, ethnic, and economic groups. SULC has faced the challenge of students who enter law school with less than perfect foundations by strenghtening its legal writing and research requirements and offering small classes (35 to 40 students for freshmen, 10 to 15 students for 2-Ls), highly qualified full-time professors, legal writing labs, individual conferencing, opportunities for rewriting, and plenty of feedback. First-year students earn a total of five credit hours in legal writing and research. During their first semester, students spend two hours per week in the classroom and library to earn one credit hour in legal research, which is taught by a tenured professor. They also spend three hours per week in legal writing -- two hours in lecture and one hour in lab -- to earn two credit hours. The lecture courses are taught by a tenure-eligible legal writing director, two legal writing instructors with 905(c) status, a visiting professor, and the placement director. Experienced adjuncts teach the labs, which offer weekly writing assignments with immediate feedback. First-year students earn an additional two hours of legal writing credit during the spring semester, again earning two credit hours for three hours of actual writing instruction.

Second-year students are required to earn two additional credit hours in legal writing and may take a one-hour course in advanced legal research as an elective. These courses are taught by a combination of adjuncts and doctrinal faculty. An upper-level elective in appellate advocacy is also offered.

SULC's legal writing faculty members are fully integrated with the doctrinal faculty. They vote at faculty meetings on all issues except tenure and promotion, serve on committees, enjoy offices in the heart of the doctrinal faculty area, and have the same opportunities as doctrinal faculty to attend conferences. For further information, contact Gail S. Stephenson, Director of Legal Writing and Assistant Professor of Law, at gstephenson@sulc.edu or 225-771-4900 ext. 267.