The overarching learning outcome is for students to develop an integrated legal and interdisciplinary understanding of the relationship between the Jaw and business so they can efficiently and effectively perform complete and accurate legal assessments in any business context, effectively collaborate with business clients, including providing them with relevant and actionable advice and properly and professionally implementing the resulting plans of action.
To accomplish that overarching outcome the Certificate course of study ensures students:
-
Obtain the necessary substantive and procedural legal knowledge in the subject areas essential to business practice in all the contexts in which business advice is given- transactional, strategic and tactical advising, dispute resolution and administrative/regulatory.
-
Can provide integrated legal advice, identifying all the areas of law relevant to a client's project, performing complete and accurate assessment on the law and addressing each individual legal area's relevance to the activities as well as the interrelations among the applicable areas of law.
-
Understand the business context and business clients’ activities and objectives so they can provide relevant and actionable advice that reflects how legal issues affect business activities in legal and practical terms, as well as identify what clients can do in response.
-
Recognize and can properly address the general and specific ethical and professionalism issues that arise in the context of dealing with business clients.
-
Can clearly, concisely, effectively communicate the relevant information and their advice, both orally and in writing, to business clients and others, including other parties and their counsel, judges, regulators, supervising or collaborating attorneys and other expert business advisors.
-
Have the full range of professional skills necessary to assist a business client, including the ability to identify and respond to contextual considerations, to organize and prioritize work and issue and to implement effectively in all relevant contexts (negotiation, creation of documentation, dispute resolution, regulatory/ administrative activities and lobbying).
Students will demonstrate their knowledge of the above through the completion of several required courses, each of which has more specific learning outcomes and assessment methods.
Adopted unanimously by the Willamette University School of Law faculty, March 20, 2017.