JD Advantage Positions
A JD Advantage job is one where a law degree provides you with a distinct advantage in performing the duties of the job, but you do not need to be admitted to the state bar or maintain an active law license.
Lawyers who hold JD Advantage positions typically work in business settings, such as accounting, banking, finance, entertainment or sports management, environment, insurance, labor relations, management consulting real estate, and venture capital. To optimize chances of a meaningful JD Advantage law career, law students should consider actively practicing law for a time. Having practice experience will provide more value to a JD Advantage position in the long term.
Courses
Courses designated as "primary" are foundational, while those listed as "secondary" contain relevant and related content. "Co-curricular" courses are credit-bearing extra-curricular activities, while "experiential" courses are practice-based offerings. Please keep in mind that the focus of any course will vary depending on the instructor.
Primary Courses
205: Entrepreneurship and the Law 2 credits PRIMARY
Entrepreneurs and their companies face different legal risks than larger and more established companies. Emerging companies often have little leverage in the marketplace, requiring novel business and legal approaches to differentiate themselves from competitors. However, entrepreneurs also compete for the capital of VCs and other investors, whose focus on financial returns makes them more risk-averse than the entrepreneurs in whom they invest. Finally, many entrepreneurial enterprises begin as small as the proverbial mustard seed but often have correspondingly small legal budgets, creating issues in instances where assuring legal compliance will require significant resources of outside counsel. These distinctions significantly impact entrepreneurs’ legal needs and relationships with their outside attorneys. It is counsel’s job to deftly steer his or her entrepreneur clients between the Scylla of reinventing the wheel and the Charybdis of conforming with other companies, all while observing the requirements of legal ethics (and hopefully being paid for the work performed). P-LAW 203.
260: Public Interest Advocacy 2 credits PRIMARY
This course is a 2-credit, seminar-sized, workshop-style legal analysis and writing course that focuses on public interest legal writing, working with underrepresented clients, and social justice/poverty themes.
397: Race, Journalism, and the Law 3 credits PRIMARY
Students will study the ways in which racism is embedded in the practice both of law and journalism and to see how the two fields can be used to challenge it. Students will begin the course by reflecting on their own biases before investigating and writing about an actual case.
408: Commercial Leasing 2 credits PRIMARY
This course focuses on the negotiation and drafting of commercial real estate leases from the initial letter of intent stage to the final lease closing. Items studied and drafting exercises include: (1) letters of intent, (2) brokerage agreements, (3) commercial leases and lease provisions at various levels of the negotiation process, (4) subordination, nondisturbance, and attornment agreements, (5) estoppel certificates, and (6) lease memoranda. The course covers various forms of commercial leases, including ground leases, retail leases, subleases, and license and occupancy agreements. This course also focuses on professionalism and ethics in the negotiation and drafting process. In addition to learning applicable law, students receive regular evaluations of substantial drafting and negotiation assignments typical of those encountered in actual practice. The negotiation and drafting skills learned in this course apply to other areas of commercial practice. P-LAW 111.
465: Compliance and Risk Management 2 credits PRIMARY
Explores a range of topics within the corporate compliance framework. The goal is to provide a focus on the critical components of corporations that rely on compliance and discuss how that translates into opportunities for lawyers. Specifically, the course will focus on the governance structure of compliance and risk management as well as best practices. This will include how programs are operated, monitored, and tested while leveraging case studies and guest speakers. Federal rules will also be utilized to understand the practical application of compliance within organizations so as to enable students to understand the role compliance plays in the overall success and sustainability of an organization.
469: Technology in the Modern Law Practice 2 credits PRIMARY
This course provides students with the opportunity to be critical and effective implementers of cutting-edge technologies that are disrupting the legal services market. This experiential seminar provides students with the critical thinking and technological skills necessary to position them as leaders in modern legal practice.
471: Real Estate Finance 2 credits PRIMARY
Covers the different ways to get a commercial project financed by securing a loan with real estate. As with other contracts, the form of the loan and the real estate serving as collateral vary from deal to deal and, depending upon the type of loan, may or may not be negotiable. This course will teach the fundamentals of real estate loans, including notes, mortgages/deeds of trust, different types of loans, ancillary loan documents, loan commitments, due diligence for loans, opinions on title, and opinions on the validity of loan documents, default and foreclosure, and ethics opinions in loan transactions. Real Estate Finance will include federal and North Carolina laws. The course will look at what happens when things go wrong, such as defective mortgages, failure of consideration, and documentation errors. Real Estate Finance will teach the practical aspects of commercial real estate, including how to interpret and negotiate loan documents, depending upon whether you represent the interests of the lender or the borrower. Examples from actual closings will be used to see what life as a commercial real estate lawyer is like. The skills learned in this class will benefit students contemplating a career in real estate transactions as well as business transactions.
474: Real Estate Development 2 credits PRIMARY
Focuses on representing clients in a commercial real estate practice. The class will follow a commercial project from site selection through development, financing, and completion of construction. The course will include the steps, from start to finish, on how to represent developers as clients. It will cover getting land under contract, due diligence, financing, negotiating leases, options and eventual sale to an investor. The skills in this class would easily transfer to any transactional practice. Real Estate Development is a companion course to Real Estate Finance, although you can take one course without the other.
509: Insurance Law 2 or 3 credits PRIMARY
In the words of one author, "Insurance ideas and practices define central privileges and responsibilities within a society. In that sense, our insurance arrangements form a material constitution, one that operates through routine, mundane transactions that nevertheless define the contours of individual and social responsibility. For that reason, studying who is eligible to receive what insurance benefits, and who pays for them, is as good a guide to the social compact as any combination of Supreme Court opinions.” Accordingly, this course will cover an array of insurance law issues, including contract law foundations, insurance regulation, first-party insurance (including life, property, and disability), and liability insurance (including its implication on tort law), always keeping in mind the broader societal implications of insurance as a risk- and cost-spreading device.
521: Mass Media Law 2 credits PRIMARY
The subject matter includes a variety of communications industries - print media, film, broadcasting, and the Internet - and a variety of legal topics - copyright infringement, defamation, censorship, and privacy. The course focuses on the impact of new technologies on the topic.
525: Health Care Law and Policy 2 or 3 credits PRIMARY
This course introduces students to the structure, financing, and regulation of the health care system and proposals for its reform. Legal topics include Medicare, medical staff disputes, health care antitrust, tax exemption, corporate organization, and insurance regulation.
536: Land Use Regulation and Planning 2 or 3 credits PRIMARY
A study of the public regulation of land use and its alternatives. The primary focus is on the scope of the police power in the zoning process.
538: Antitrust 2 or 3 credits PRIMARY
An overview of federal antitrust law or competition law, including laws related to agreements restraining trade (especially agreements between competitors), monopolization and attempted monopolization, unfair trade practices, and merger policy and practice. These topics are relevant to all businesses and their lawyers. The course focuses on learning the fundamentals and a practical approach for counseling clients in this area.
543: Banking Law 2 credits PRIMARY
The study of American banking laws and regulations taught from a historical standpoint from pre-colonial times to the present.
641: Regulatory Law and Policy 3 credits PRIMARY
This course taught as a seminar, examines the advocacy skills that lawyers use in regulatory practice to persuade agencies to adopt actions that their clients favor. Any student who thinks she or he might practice in front of a regulatory agency should benefit from the course.
Experiential Courses
345: Semester in Practice 10 or 11 credits EXPERIENTIAL
This is the field placement component of a full term externship program and is paired with the Externship Lecture course. Total credits between Semester in Practice and Externship Lecture will total 13. The number of credit hours awarded to an individual student will determine the hours of work required at the field placement and meet or exceed the ABA standards. In accordance with ABA guidelines, students work at a placement under a supervising attorney. C-LAW 300.
645: Mediation 2 or 3 credits EXPERIENTIAL
Law schools classically prepare attorneys to represent clients by teaching the law, theory, procedures, and, skills necessary to prepare for and try cases in court. This approach is based upon the underlying assumption that our legal system works best when disputes are determined by an impartial judge or jury after a zealous presentation of the facts and law by the attorneys for all parties. Instead, this mediation practice class is based upon the assumptions that: 1) most parties know what is in their own best interest; 2) if given the opportunity and tools, most litigants are able to solve their own problems and 3) litigants are generally more satisfied when they are involved in determining the outcome of their cases instead of the results being dictated to them by a judge or jury. The course will focus on mediation as a method of dispute resolution from the perspective of attorneys representing clients at mediation as well as from the perspective of mediators facilitating mediated settlement conferences. Students will participate in simulated mediation sessions. This course is 50% lecture and 50% practical skills. Local attorneys assist me by observing students in simulations, guiding and advising students' in-class work, and adding to students' practical knowledge from their own legal careers. This course follows the required curriculum of the 40-hour training that NC attorneys receive in partial satisfaction of the requirements to become North Carolina Dispute Resolution Commission (NCDRC) Certified Mediators. The NCDRC has approved this course as commensurate to that which practicing attorneys receive. Passing students receive a certificate of completion which they may present to the NCDRC in their fifth year of law practice in satisfaction of Rule 8A of the Revised Rules for Superior Court Civil actions. Students who have taken Dispute Resolution in the past or who are enrolled in or who plan to take the Dispute Resolution course may not register for Mediation.
676: Summer Externship 4 credits EXPERIENTIAL
This course is currently available only in the summer. The director of the externship designates one or more cities in North and South Carolina, usually including Charlotte, NC, and offers the students externships in a designated practice area. The practice areas vary from summer to summer. Students meet weekly with the director to integrate and apply the doctrinal insights received elsewhere in the law school curriculum and in the subject matter of the field placements.
Faculty
The following faculty are knowledgeable about the topic and may be a useful resource for you.
Professor of Law
Fred D. and Elizabeth L Turnage Professor of Law
Professor of Practice
Frank U. Fletcher Chair in Administrative Law
