Curriculum Guide · Courses

Dean Epstein and Professor Tsoukala

J.D. Course 1041 | 4 credit hours

This course examines the legal regulation of the domestic relationships of adults, married and unmarried. Topics covered include marriage and other intimate relationships, divorce, custody disputes, alimony, child support, and division of property. Please note that there is a midterm examination for this course, which consists in a divorce negotiation exercise. The midterm counts for 50% of your final grade. For the purposes of the exercise you will be required to meet once outside of the classroom with your partner in preparation for the negotiation and once more with your partner and opposing counsels in preparation of the final settlement agreement.

Students enrolled in the field work component of the course will receive one additional pass/fail credit for five hours/week of field work, focused on the area of domestic violence – an issue that permeates virtually every aspect of family law. Professor Deborah Epstein will supervise students on two complementary field work projects. First, the students will be divided into two groups of five; each group will develop a community education curriculum, which they will present to a group of indigent victims of domestic violence in the local community. The presentation will be designed to walk participants through the legal system governing civil protection orders and help them understand how to best prepare their own cases. Second, each student will spend one day at the DC Superior Court’s Domestic Violence Intake Center: (1) interviewing an individual survivor; (2) helping her to draft and file a complaint; and (3) preparing her for and accompanying her to an ex parte temporary protection order hearing. Finally, students will draft a series of short reflection papers, designed to help them connect various aspects of their seminar work with their client-based field work.

Recommended: Prior or concurrent enrollment in Constitutional Law II: Individual Rights and Liberties.

Students may not concurrently enroll in this seminar and an externship or a clinic (except Street Law) or another practicum course. Students may not receive credit for both this course and Family Law (LAWJ-588).

Students who wish to receive credit for the Externship Seminar and an experiential learning course that has the same field placement may do so only if: (1) the experiential learning course is taken in a semester following the Externship Seminar; and (2) the student receives permission from the Assistant or the Associate Dean for Clinical Programs. To receive such permission, the student must explain in writing how the experiential learning course field work would serve substantially different learning goals than did their externship field placement. THIS IS AN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING COURSE. This section is a combination of the 3 credit Family Law I: Marriage and Divorce course (LAWJ-173-07) and a 1 credit experiential learning component. This is a 4 credit course. Three credits will be awarded for the three hour course and 1 credit will be awarded for approximately 5 hours of supervised work per week, for a minimum of 11 weeks. Note: The seminar portion will be graded. The 1 credit of supervised work is mandatory pass/fail and counts toward the 7 credit pass/fail limit. Students will be allowed to take another course pass/fail in the same semester as the supervised work. Note: There is a graded midterm exercise in this course.