Legal Courses for Professionals
Professional Legal Courses Overview
Quality legal education—whether that be in pursuit of supplemental knowledge, a professional certificate, master’s degree, or a Juris Doctor—should be accessible to all.
To that end, The Colleges of Law offers practicing lawyers and working professionals representing other industries like you the opportunity to enroll in professional courses that can help enhance your legal skills, maintain relevance in a constantly evolving field, and open doors to future career opportunities.
These courses are designed to address areas of the law that are in demand today, including Business Operations, Entrepreneurship, Emerging Law, and Technology.
Review this semester’s professional courses, and register below.
Professional Courses for the Modern Legal Landscape
The Colleges of Law’s professional legal courses focus on preparing you for emerging areas of the legal profession and provide you with as much education as is right for your current situation. These courses include:
- Regulation and Compliance
- Technology for Legal Professionals
- Privacy Dilemmas
- Data Security and Breach
- Litigation Operations
- Litigation and Its Alternatives
- Introduction to Startup Law
- Building Legal Applications
- eDiscovery
- Blockchain, Smart Contracts, and Computational Law
- Project Management
- Law Practice Management
- Emerging Technology and the Law
Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Requirements
With some exceptions, most lawyers who practice in the state of California are required to complete 25 hours of Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) programming every year. Taught by working legal professionals, professional courses at The Colleges of Law examine emerging areas of law and the business practices of the legal industry. Professional courses may be taken for individually reported MCLE credit.
See the tab above for more information.
Flexible, Accessible, and Affordable
Courses are designed with working professionals in mind and can be completed in just eight weeks for only $600. Online learning options are also available to meet the needs of your busy schedule.
Enroll in one or two courses to expand your expertise in a specific topic or complete at least four courses to earn a professional certificate in Business Operations, Entrepreneurship, Emerging Law, or Technology.
These courses may also be transferred to the Master of Business, Law, and Technology degree program for credit. Contact admissions to learn more.
Licensure: Except as provided in rule 4.30 of the Admissions Rules (Legal Education in a foreign state or country), completion of a professional law degree program at this law school other than for the Juris Doctor degree does not qualify a student to take the California Bar Examination or satisfy the requirements for admission to practice law in California.
Fall 2023 Term I:
LAW/MA 519 – Project Management (3 units)
August 28, 2023 – October 22, 2023
This course will provide an overview of the principles of project management, addressing topics of PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The extensive use of case studies will allow students to apply PMI theory in practical simulated legal projects. Students will develop the skills and knowledge necessary for effective decision-making and project management, including techniques for evaluating profitability, outsourcing opportunities, law firm considerations like alternative fee arrangements, and the role of technology and innovation in legal project management.
Units: 3
Fall 2023 Term II:
LAW/MA 508 – eLawyering (3 units)
October 23, 2023 – December 17, 2023
This course focuses on the overlap between business, technology, and the legal industry. Topics are segmented into three discrete areas of study: Legal Innovation; Automation and AI; and Data. The legal innovation section will offer students a glimpse into the future of legal practice as well as alternative legal services. Both the ethical considerations and career implications will be covered while exposing students to online legal marketing and online practice management. The section covering automation and artificial intelligence will show the efficiency of these technical legal services and lawyer augmentations with careful attention to automation governance and embedded bias. The data portion of the course will touch on data used for legal prediction, eDiscovery and ESI, and privacy and security in the legal sector. Each section of the course will focus on what modern legal service and how insights from other disciplines have disrupted the status quo. The course also considers the secondary effects on law, the legal profession, and legal services likely to arise from the addition of technology to many legal tasks.
Units: 3
LLL 508 – eLawyering, MCLE Skills Component ONLY (1 unit)
October 23, 2023 – December 17, 2023
The skills portion of this course will focus on writing and publishing blogs as an advertising tool for lawyers and legal professionals and the use of ChatGPT by legal professionals. The ethical considerations of legal professional blogging and the technical aspects of setting up and publishing a blog will be examined. The ChatGPT section will offer guidance on prompt engineering and how to use ChatGPT for legal tasks ethically.
LAW/MA 524 – Blockchain, Smart Contracts, and Computational Law (3 units)
October 23, 2023 – December 17, 2023
The public debate about smart contracts, blockchain, and computational law is filled with alarms and elevated expectations. Blockchain technology gives us the framework to create a shared ledger system where various parties can report their compliance data/documentation, property records may be store, personal identities can be managed, corporate governance may be automated, and decentralized currency may be exchanged. Smart contracts make use of the blockchain to execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. Computational law addresses the automation of legal reasoning to support transactions and compliance. The topics examined in this course will include formalism versus contextualism, form versus context, distributed ledgers, smart contract enforceability, blockchain regulation, and automated compliance.
To qualify for the continual learning program, a minimum of a completed associate degree and experience working in a legal field OR a bachelor’s degree is required.
You must be at least 21 years of age.
These courses are for professional education purposes only and are not eligible for residents in any of the following states:
- 1. Alaska (AK)
- 2. Alabama (AL)
- 3. Arkansas (AR)
- 4. Connecticut (CT)
- 5. Delaware (DE)
- 6. Georgie (GA)
- 7. Iowa (IA)
- 8. Indiana (IN)
- 9. Kansas (KS)
- 10. Maryland (MD)
- 11. Minnesota (MN)
- 12. Montana (MT)
- 13. North Dakota (ND)
- 14. New York (NY)
- 15. Oregon (OR)
- 16. Puerto Rico (PR)
- 17. Rhode Island (RI)
- 18. Wisconsin (WI)
- 19. Wyoming (WY)
- 20. Washington, D.C. (DC)