Graduate practice ready
At Iowa Law, you’ll experience collaboration over competition in and outside of the classroom.
Faculty take a mentor approach and are dedicated to helping you become practice-ready. Smaller class sizes mean you’ll get to know your peers and professors.
Premier legal writing and hands-on, experiential learning in our clinics, field placements, and opportunities through career services are key components of the Iowa Law curriculum.
Courses and hours
The JD requires a minimum of 88 semester hours to graduate. This includes six semester hours of required experiential learning, which students can earn inside the classroom in a variety of simulations or skills-based courses, or outside of the classroom in field work or the Iowa Law Clinic.
Work in the legal field
Work in government or nonprofit agencies, criminal prosecution and defense offices, state and federal courts, and international law offices and agencies.
Go hands-on in clinic
In the Iowa Law Clinic, students serve as attorneys for real clients. The clinic functions like a law firm, with five distinct practice groups.
Explore legal systems abroad
Study legal systems in Europe and other parts of the world firsthand through several study abroad programs.
Core courses
The first-year required courses are Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law I, Contracts, Criminal Law, Introduction to Law and Legal Reasoning, Property, and Torts, in addition to small seminars each semester in Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research (LAWR). Required upper-level courses include Professional Responsibility and Constitutional Law II, plus elective courses to fulfill upper-level writing requirements.
Elective courses
Elective courses draw from the Iowa Law’s own curriculum as well as from classes throughout the entire university, since students can elect to take up to 20 semester hours of non-law courses by seeking approval for those courses. From business law to criminal practice to baseball arbitration—and dozens of areas between—the law school’s program of legal education is vast and deep, offering something for everyone.
Legal writing emphasis
Strong writing skills are essential in the legal profession. Iowa Law has seven full-time writing faculty and 11 writing tutors who are all committed to developing analytical thinking and persuasive writing skills—that's why we're known as The Writing Law School.
You’ll take 5 credits of legal analysis, writing, and research as a first-year student. Through intensive, individualized attention—including 3–6 one-on-one conferences each semester—you’ll deepen your understanding of law and learn to be an effective legal communicator.
After your first year, you’ll complete four more writing credits from courses of your choosing. Iowa Law also offers many writing and oral advocacy competitions, including appellate advocacy, international and domestic appellate advocacy competitions, and oral advocacy focused on intellectual property. Advanced research instruction is available through our highly skilled research librarians, all of whom have JDs and library science degrees.
