Section Contents

1. Full-Time Enrollment
2. Entering First-Year Students
3. [Deleted]
4. Enrollment in field placement, clinic, and simulation courses
5. Limitation on credits taken simultaneously
6. Enrollment in summer session courses
7. Overlapping courses
8. Duplicative courses
9. Auditing courses
10. Co-curricular hours
11. Limited enrollment courses
12. Clinic Enrollment
13. Special Rule Concerning Written Work Submitted for More than One Purpose
14. Course Dropping Policy
15. Attendance

Notes

Adopted 10/2016.

A. Full-Time Enrollment

Adopted 11/2017.

The faculty believes that students receive a better legal education when they are devoting substantially all of their time to educational pursuits. For this reason, students at Iowa are expected to pursue their law training on a full-time basis. Consistent with its full-time policy, the faculty strongly recommends that students avoid jobs that require more than 20 hours of work per week.

No student shall enroll in fewer than 10 credit hours during the Spring or Fall semesters. For purposes of this requirement, courses taken during the January, March or May intersession count toward the Spring semester and courses taken during the August intersession count toward the Fall semester. In extraordinary circumstances or those of extreme hardship, students may obtain the permission of the Dean to enroll in fewer than ten credit hours per semester, or to withdraw from courses if that withdrawal would bring the student below the minimum credit hours. The fact that a student needs fewer than 10 credit hours to graduate shall be considered an acceptable circumstance for enrolling in fewer than 10 credit hours in a semester. Students who believe they may be unable to attend on a full-time basis should contact the Dean before registering for class.

B. Entering First-Year Students

Adopted 5/2005 & 10/2015; amended 05/2016; 11/2016.

Entering first-year students are required to take all of the first-year courses and one elective and cannot register for different courses or fewer hours without permission of the Dean of Students. Subject to prerequisites, first year students are required to select a 3-credit elective from the entire curriculum (excluding seminars), provided that individual faculty members can exclude first year students from their upper division courses.

C. [Deleted]¹

D. Enrollment in field placement, clinic, and simulation courses

Adopted 3/2018; amended 2/2023; 5/2024; 4/2025.

1. Required first-year courses and experiences. Except as provided below, no student shall be enrolled in a field placement or clinical course unless that student has first received a passing grade in all of the required first-year courses identified in paragraph (D)(1) of the Graduation Requirements for the J.D. degree and has completed the two educational experiences on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism required by ABA Standard 303(c).²
2. Exceptions
   1. Summer Legal Placement after the first year. A student may enroll in a Summer Legal Placement immediately following completion of the student’s first year even if the student has not received a passing grade in all of the required courses offered in the second semester of the first year.
   2. Extraordinary circumstances. The Dean or the Dean’s designate may in extraordinary cases grant exceptions to the requirement stated in paragraph (1), but such exceptions shall not be granted unless, at a minimum, the student has successfully completed sufficient prerequisites or shall receive sufficient contemporaneous training to assure the quality of the student educational experience. Such an exception may be granted to a student who has not yet completed the two educational experiences required under Standard 303(c) only if the student will be concurrently completing those experiences.
3. Simulation courses. Instructors in a simulation course shall ensure that each student enrolled in their course shall have successfully completed sufficient prerequisites or shall receive sufficient contemporaneous training to assure the quality of the student educational experience.
4. Additional prerequisites. Additional prerequisites may be specified for individual field placements or clinics.

E. Limitation on credits taken simultaneously

Amended 11/2024;

No student shall be enrolled in coursework to count toward the J.D. degree totaling more than 16 credits at any one time. The Dean or the Dean’s designate may increase this limit to no more than 17 credits, subject always to the relevant ABA Standards.³ Courses taken during the March intersession count toward the 16-hour maximum for the Spring semester. Courses taken during the January, May, or August intersessions do not count unless a substantial amount of the work required for the course will be completed during the subsequent regular or summer session. In cases where the work for an intersession course carries over into a subsequent school session, a portion of the total hours will be allocated to the subsequent session at the discretion of the Dean of Students only for purposes of determining whether a student’s course workload is consistent with the policy of this rule.

F. Enrollment in summer session courses

No student shall be enrolled in courses totaling more than 12 credits during any one summer, excluding the May and August intersessions. The Dean or the Dean’s designate may increase this limit to no more than 13 credits, subject always to the relevant ABA Standards.

G. Overlapping courses

Enrollment in courses whose scheduled meeting times overlap is ordinarily not permitted. Nevertheless, it may be allowed in limited circumstances where the law student has a compelling need to take two conflicting courses in a particular semester. No student may enroll in courses without the written permission of the instructors of both overlapping courses. An instructor may permit a student to miss sessions of his or her course on account of overlapping enrollment only after reaching an agreement with the student on how that student will fulfill the requirements of the course, despite the planned absences. Acceptable arrangements may include the required viewing of recordings of the classes missed, extra tutorial sessions, or the student’s taking the course under an independent tutorial designation, under which the student would get reduced credit for attending the reduced number of class sessions. In no event, however, may the overlap exceed 1/3 of the credit hours of any course affected by the overlap.

H. Duplicative courses

A student will not be permitted to take a course if, after consulting relevant faculty, the Dean of Students concludes that the course substantially duplicates work done in other courses taken or being taken by the student.

I. Auditing courses

Students are allowed to audit classes with the permission of the instructor if the class is not filled within the pre-registration period. Auditing a course does not eliminate the payment of tuition and fees for the course.

J. Co-curricular hours

All students involved in a co-curricular activity for which more than one academic hour is earned must be registered for some part of the expected credit hour total in each semester in which they are substantially engaged in the activity.

K. Limited enrollment courses

Adopted 5/2023; amended 5/2024; 11/2024.

Some courses enroll only a limited number of students. J.D. students have priority over others for course enrollment; exceptions will be listed in the registration materials, subject to the ABA requirement that J.D. students must have priority in any course required for the J.D. degree, needed for bar examination preparation, or required for bar admission, unless otherwise provided by law. See ABA Standard 313(c) and August 2024 Guidance Memo. To qualify for priority enrollment, J.D. students must comply with established registration deadlines and procedures. Limited-enrollment courses include most seminars providing faculty-supervised writing credits or experiential units. They may sometimes include the two required upper-level courses, Professional Responsibility and Constitutional Law II, as well as other high-demand courses. Students are admitted to such courses according to a preference system. Preference is given to students in the following order:

1. Students who are 3L or graduating within the next two semesters and need the course to satisfy the upper-level writing or experiential course requirements or to complete a required course;
2. then to other J.D. students who need the course to satisfy the upper-level writing or experiential course requirements or to complete a required course;
3. then to 3Ls over others.

Within each of those categories, preference will be given first to those who bid more points under a bidding process to be conducted by the Registrar. Among those who bid the same number of points, preference in courses offering writing units or experiential credits goes to those who need more such units/credits than others.

In some limited-enrollment courses (for example, clinical and field placement courses), enrollment is determined not by the preference system described above but by separate application. Only J.D. students may enroll in field placement courses.

L. Clinic Enrollment

Clinic enrollments during the fall and spring semesters for six to nine credit hours will be given identical priority beginning in the fall of 2016. Unless unanticipated circumstances prompt and earlier review, the clinic faculty will review enrollment figures in the fall of 2018 to determine whether it is feasible to continue to offer nine-credit enrollments.

In order to test and become familiar with this new system as it applies to fall-semester, second-year students, a total of four such students will be admitted to the clinic in the fall of 2016, each enrolling for six credit hours. The experience gained from that semester should enable the clinic faculty to operate a full-scale clinic for such students beginning in fall 2017.

M. Special Rule Concerning Written Work Submitted for More than One Purpose

Amended 1/2018.

Where writing units or academic credit hours are sought for research or other work on a legal problem on which the student has previously or is simultaneously working for compensation or for writing units or academic credit hours in another course in the College of Law or elsewhere, the fact, nature, and extent of the related work must be fully and promptly disclosed to each faculty member awarding credit hours for the work. Where the attorney-client privilege precludes full disclosure of the related work product, at least the fact that the student has been involved with a related work product must be disclosed to each faculty member awarding credit hours.

N. Course Dropping Policy

Amended 10/1997.

After the first two weeks a course meets, no student may drop the course without the consent of the instructor. In no event may a student drop any course after the distribution to that student of the final exam in the course. Instructors who wish to set policies in their courses of not permitting drops, beyond a particular period, except in hardship cases, are encouraged to announce such policies through written notices distributed during the first week of class. If a claimed hardship is one of disability, illness or other temporary medical condition, or a mental or psychological condition, the Dean or Dean’s Designate shall determine whether the condition amounts to a hardship and shall decide, after consultation with the appropriate treating professional and the instructor, whether the student will be permitted to drop the class.

O. Attendance

Adopted 10/2016.

Class attendance must be regular and punctual, and students must be prepared for participation in class. A student may be dropped from a course or failed, at the discretion of the instructor, for excessive absences, or for repeated lack of adequate preparation for or participation in class. In addition, students are expected to attend special class meetings and be punctual in submitting course assignments.

Instructors may establish more specific standards for attendance and shall notify students of any such standards at the beginning of the course.

Notes:

1. Prior to the Spring of 2020, our policy provided that “No student shall be enrolled in a distance education course unless that student has first completed instruction equivalent to 28 credits toward the J.D. degree.”  On May 14, 2020, in response to the Covid pandemic, the faculty adopted the following policy: “Section II(B)(6) (Graduation Requirements for the J.D. Degree) and Section III(C) (Enrollment in distance education courses) of the College of Law’s Academic Policies and Procedures shall not apply to courses taken in the Spring 2020, Summer 2020, March 2020 Intersession, and May 2020 Intersession.”  On November 5, 2020, the faculty approved an extension of that policy:  “Section II(B)(6) (Graduation Requirements for the J.D. Degree) and Section III(C) (Enrollment in distance education courses) of the College of Law’s Academic Policies and Procedures shall not apply to courses taken from the August 2020 Intersession through the May 2021 Intersession, inclusive.”  On February 17, 2022, the faculty voted to delete the requirement students complete 28 credits before enrolling in any distance education courses.
2. The Standard 303(c) requirement applies only to students entering the College of Law as first-year students in the Fall of 2023 or later and students entering the College of Law as transfer students (including those entering as advanced standing J.D. students) in the Fall of 2024 or later.  In the 2023-24 academic year, the law school’s Orientation sessions, together with its required course on Introduction to Legal Theory and Perspectives on the Law, satisfied Standard 303(c)’s requirements.  In subsequent years, the law school required students to complete the second Standard 303(c) experience in another form.  (Footnote revised by the faculty, May 9, 2024 and April 17, 2025.)
3. Students who entered the College of Law as first-year students prior to the fall of 2020 and students entering the College of Law as transfer students or two-year J.D. students prior to the Fall of 2021 are limited to 15 credit hours from courses taken during any one semester, or 16 with the permission of the Dean or Dean’s designate.