Legal Writing Requirement/Thesis - Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property Law Concentration - Legal Writing Requirement

All IP Concentration students must satisfy the Concentration's legal writing requirement in one of the following manners:

• With a paper which meets the standards of the Law School's legal writing requirement, and has been written for an approved Intellectual Property Law Concentration course or as part of a Directed Study project with a full time faculty member; OR
• With a law journal piece or moot court brief on an Intellectual Property topic which meets the standards of the Law School's legal writing requirement, whose subject matter comes within the scope of an Intellectual Property Concentration course, and has been approved by the Faculty Director of the Intellectual Property Concentration.

Optional Thesis

• Students who are enrolled in the Intellectual Property Concentration may opt to write a thesis on an Intellectual Property law topic.
• Students who complete a thesis to the satisfaction of their supervising resident faculty member are eligible to complete the Concentration with distinction, as long as all other Concentration requirements are met.
• Completion of a thesis satisfies the Intellectual Property Concentration's legal writing requirement.
• Students who choose the thesis option must write a thesis of publishable quality on an Intellectual Property law topic which is supervised by a resident faculty member, and approved by both the resident faculty member and the Intellectual Property Concentration director.
• The standards applied to the thesis are significantly beyond those applied to satisfaction of the Law School's legal writing requirement, and are determined by the supervising resident faculty member.
• If a thesis fails to meet the standards applied by the supervising resident faculty member, the course will be changed from a thesis to a Directed Study on the student's transcript.
• The thesis must be completed by the time of graduation, but arrangements for faculty supervision and topic approval, as well as significant work on the project, should be initiated at least two semesters before anticipated graduation.
• The thesis is taken for two (2) credits and may be either graded of taken pass/fail, at the student's election. Students who elect to write a Concentration thesis may not also receive credit in the same semester for honor board, directed study, research assistantship, or participation on a moot court team.

Thesis students should review "Frequently Asked Questions and Answers About the Intellectual Property Thesis," in the Law Office of Academic Services.