Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD)

Required First-Year Curriculum.

All first-year students are required to attend the Orientation program.

The first-year curriculum consists of the required courses listed below.

Applied Legal Analysis and Advanced Training in Legal Skills

Upon the completion of the first semester of studies at the law school, students with a cumulative GPA of 2.90 or below are required to take course - Applied Legal Analysis I (Spring) in the spring semester of their 1L year.

All students in these catalog years are required to take course - Advanced Training in Legal Skills in the first semester of their 2L year, unless they earn a sufficiently high score on the 1L diagnostic test. (The score may change annually and will be announced each year.)

Upper-Division Curricular Requirements

All upper division students, regardless of catalog year, cumulative GPA, or the results of their diagnostic assessment, must meet the following requirements to graduate:

• Complete course - Professional Responsibility in their 2L year;

• Complete the Experiential Learning Requirement;

• Complete the Graduation Writing Requirements;

• Complete the appropriate required upper-division courses (see below). Required courses must be taken at Willamette University College of Law.

• Complete a total of 90 credits, 70 of which must be letter-graded and no more than 7 of which may be co-curricular, with a cumulative GPA of at least 2.30.

Waivers to academic requirements will not be granted because a person is not taking a bar, or because they are taking a bar in a jurisdiction where different topics are tested. Generally, only irreconcilable scheduling conflicts with other required classes would potentially justify the grant of a waiver of required courses listed in this section, but such waiver can only be granted by the Student Petitions Committee. Waiver requests are submitted to the Committee via the Associate Dean for Student Affairs & Administration. Decisions of the Committee are final.

Students graduating in 2026 or beyond are required to complete the following courses:

• course - Evidence

• course - Real Estate Transactions

• course - Constitutional Law II

• course - Criminal Procedure I

• course - Business Organizations

• course - Family Law

• course - Advanced Training in Legal Skills (previously ALA II), if applicable

• course - Legal Analysis for the Bar (last semester)

• course - Negotiation or course - Client Interviewing/Counseling. This requirement may also be fulfilled by taking at least four credits from the following courses: course - Business Negotiations (2 credits), course - Contract Drafting (2 credits), course - ADR (3 credits), course - Tenant Eviction Defense (3 credits), course - Plea Bargaining (2 credits), or a Clinic offered through the Clinical Law Program (variable credits).

Grades in Required Courses

• To graduate, a student must earn a passing grade of D- (0.6 quality points) or better for each required course in order to earn credit. A student who earns a failing grade in any required course will not earn credit for that course and must retake the course at Willamette. The F will remain on the transcript, but will not be included in a student’s GPA, if the student retakes the required course and receives a passing grade. The grade earned on the retake will also appear on the transcript and will be used to calculate the students GPA.

• A course cannot be retaken if a student previously earned a passing grade.

Letter-Graded Courses

• All first-year courses are graded on a letter-graded basis.

• A JD student may not take a course on an Honors/Credit/No Credit basis if the course is listed as a letter-graded course.

Total Number of Credits Required for Graduation

• The total number of credit hours required for graduation is 90, of which at least 70 must be letter-graded. Students may count no more than seven (7) co-curricular credits towards the 90 total credits required for graduation.

• For letter-graded courses, a student must earn a grade of D- (0.6) or higher to have the hours for that course count toward the 70 letter-graded hour graduation requirement. A grade below D- is a failing grade and is recorded as F. Credits for that course are not counted toward the 90-hour graduation requirement. The F will be included in the student’s cumulative GPA unless and until the course is retaken. There is no right to retake a course and there is no guarantee that a course will be re-offered.

• For courses graded on an Honors/Credit/No Credit basis, a grade of No Credit (NC) means that the hours for that course will not count towards the 90-hour graduation requirement.