Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Gastelumendi

J.D. Course 259 | 2 credit hours

The course provides an introduction to Spanish legal vocabulary. It has two primary goals. The first is to help students develop basic skills in reading, understanding and writing legal documents (acts, codes, statues, contracts, etc.) in Spanish. The course will help students work on these skills in several different practice contexts: assisting Spanish-speaking clients, writing memos in Spanish for law firms, corporations, governments or international organizations. The second goal is to help students understand the Latin American and Spanish legal systems, political framework and related cultural contexts.

The course is recommended to students interested in Latin American law, in international and comparative law, or, more specifically, in working with Hispanic clients or corporations, or in cross-border transactions.

Using a hands-on approach, the student will work on various kinds of legal documents, such as labor contracts, real estate contracts, statutes, judiciary documents (claims and appeals), and deeds, related to different legal subjects (constitutional and administrative public law, property, contracts, torts, labor, immigration, criminal, tax, corporate, commercial, business, natural resources, and trade law). We will also briefly address legal research in Spanish.

Students will be expected to write in fair Spanish an in-class exam (a short commentary on a contract or on an article of a statute, or questions on a case). Because the course will be taught in Spanish, students should be able to speak and write well enough in Spanish to benefit from the course.

Students may not receive credit for both this course and the Week One course, Spanish for Lawyers or the 1 credit version of this course by the same name.

This course is mandatory pass/fail and the credits count toward the 7 credit pass/fail limit. THIS COURSE REQUIRES PROFESSOR PERMISSION TO ENROLL. Interested students should contact Professor Gastelumendi (email: jgastelumendi@yahoo.com) to submit their resume, contact information, and a statement explaining their interest in the course and their Spanish language skills by 5:00 p.m. on November 4, 2011.