The first-year curriculum at Florida State Law is prescribed and provides the basics of law needed to understand other, more specialized courses offered at the upper levels. The curriculum requirements consist of 30 credit hours through courses divided between the first and second semesters as follows:
|Fall Semester (14 credits)||Spring Semester (16 credits)|
|Civil Procedure (4)||Contracts (4)|
|Property (4)||Criminal Law (3)|
|Torts (4)||Legislation-Regulation (3)|
|Legal Writing (2)||Legal Writing (3, 2 contact hours)|
|Constitutional Law (3)|
This first-year curriculum design supports the Florida State Law's liberal arts approach to legal education, in which students begin their course of study through core doctrinal courses and a thorough introduction to legal writing and research skills. The goal is to use the doctrinal courses and the legal writing course as the base for introducing students to the substantive, analytic and procedural content of law and legal systems.