Law School Learning Outcomes
Rutgers Law School seeks to open doors for our students. To prepare our students for practice we offer them opportunities to experience and learn from law in action as well as law in books. We invite students to study how law affects and can promote social justice for diverse groups, including those historically disadvantaged. We offer our students historical, economic, comparative, philosophical, rhetorical, and other multidisciplinary perspectives on how law functions and should function. We encourage students to represent those who would not otherwise have access to legal representation.
Within these broader goals, we expect our graduates to be able to proficiently:
- Understand both substantive and procedural law, sufficient to begin the practice of law;
- Conduct research to solve problems, analyze a variety of sources, evaluate competing interpretations, and construct well-supported arguments;
- Exercise professional and ethical responsibilities as representatives of clients, officers of the legal system, and public citizens with a special commitment to the pursuit of justice;
- Communicate orally and in writing with a variety of professional and lay audiences;
- Integrate doctrine, theory, skills, and ethics to solve problems as competent and ethical members of the legal profession;
- Demonstrate cultural competence by recognizing how identity and lived experience shape legal interactions, communicate with empathy and respect across differences, and reflect on their own assumptions and biases.