JD Course Registration FAQ

A week before registration begins you will receive an email from the Law Registrar (LawReg@law.miami.edu) with pertinent information about registration including appointment times and a link to the course schedule.

Registration for the Fall generally occurs in April and registration for the Spring generally occurs in November.

Once you get the email from the Registrar announcing registration, you should log onto the  CaneLink student center. From the green options menu on the lefthand side of the screen, make the following selections: “Enrollment → Enrollment Dates.”

To ensure a smooth registration process, the JD class is divided into several registration times over a handful of days. Your registration time is randomly selected from those available.

Starting with registration for your 2L year, if you receive a late registration time one semester, you will receive an earlier registration time the following semester. In other words, you should have 1 early, and 1 later registration time each year. There are no other factors which affect the registration time that you are assigned.

The best place to view details about a course is CourseLink, which is a different platform entirely from the above- mentioned, CaneLink. You can tap or click on the course number of any course listed on CourseLink to open a separate tab with a variety of information about that course.

After you have browsed the course catalog on CourseLink, head back over to CaneLink to enroll. Select

“Enrollment” and then “Class Search” to add classes to your “Shopping Cart.” Then proceed from “Enrollment” to “Shopping Cart” to actually enroll.

CaneLink has a ‘Class Swap’ feature that will allow you to enroll in a backup course while also entering the waitlist for your first-choice course. If you come off the waitlist, your first-choice class will automatically replace your back up selection.

The drop and add deadlines can be found on the academic calendar.

For a current 1L in Sections A or B, or a 2L or 3L that was originally in those sections, you should reach out to

Jack Townsend (Section A) (Jack.Townsend@law.miami.edu) or Alex Calle (Section B) (a.calle1@law.miami.edu) for registration assistance.

For a current 1L in Sections C or D, or a 2L or 3L that was originally in those sections, you should reach out to Odetta Clarke (oclarke@law.miami.edu) for registration assistance.

The JD graduation requirements can be viewed right here!

You can also view your progress on these requirements by performing a degree audit on CaneLink.

The best way to see if a particular course satisfies a graduation requirement is to check the course listing on CourseLink. Once you’re on CourseLink, you will see that the far right hand column of the course list reads: “Graduation Requirements Fulfilled by Course.” Each course is designated as either skills, writing, professional responsibility, or general in this column.

Students may earn 2-cedits and satisfy a writing requirement by completing an independent study research paper with a full-time member of the faculty that has agreed to supervise them. You can register an independent study using the form available here.

Law review papers may also be used as independent study papers.

The MPRE is the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination. A passing score on the MPRE is a requirement for admission to almost every state bar in the United States, including Florida.

The material you cover in your required professional responsibility course will, in most cases, overlap significantly with the subjects tested on the MPRE. This is why we recommend taking the MPRE in the same semester that you take your professional responsibility course.

The MPRE is usually offered three times per year in August, November, and March.

You need 88 credits to complete your JD and the 1L curriculum almost always consists of 32 credits. This means you need to average between 14 per semester during your 2L and 3L years to stay on track (assuming you do not take any Summer credits).

There are no bar subject courses required in the 2L and 3L years aside from Professional Responsibility which is a subject tested on the Florida bar.

While very few students manage to take every single bar subject course before graduation, it is advisable to take at least a couple each semester. All of the bar subject courses are listed here.

Non-Florida bar takers will still want to complete some or most of the upper-level subjects tested on the Multi- State Bar Exam (MBE): Civil Procedure II, Constitutional Law II, Evidence, and Substantive Criminal Law. You

should verify what other subjects are tested on the state bar of your choosing.

Students in their final semester have the option of taking two classes designed to prepare them for the bar exam:

Topics in Florida Practice, and Topics on the Multi-State Bar Exam. Students taking an out of state bar exam should still consider taking the Topics on the Multi-State Bar Exam course. Also, Trusts and Estates Essentials and UCC Essentials are recommended if you do not wish to take the four-credit courses.

The normal maximum credit load for students during the Fall and Spring semesters is 16 credits. Students may apply to take up to 17 credits during the Fall or Spring using the form available here. Students should not endeavor to take 17 credits in a single semester unless there are specific and compelling reasons to do so, such as being enrolled in a joint degree program.

The maximum credit load during the Summer session is 8 credits.

You must enroll in at least 11 credits each semester to be considered a full-time student. Students are not allowed to drop to part time status unless they are in their final semester and need less than 11 credits to graduate.

Students may take up to 1/2 of their total credits required for graduation as distance learning or online courses. For JD students, this works out to 44 out of 88 credits that may be taken online.

Note that several semesters have been exempt from this general rule due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Any online courses you took during the following semesters do not count towards this 29-credit cap: Spring ’20, Summer ’20, Fall ’20, Spring ’21, Summer ’21, Fall ’21, Spring ’22.

There is no limit to the number of pass/fail credits you can take. However, each student only has two pass/fail elections to use during their time in law school. A pass/fail election allows you to take a class that would otherwise be graded and make it into a pass/fail opportunity. Other courses, such as Litigation Skills, are only offered pass/fail. These mandatorily pass/fail courses do not count against your two pass/fail elections.

Not all courses are eligible for pass/fail election. Check CourseLink and plan accordingly.

Note that if more than 25% of your total credits are ungraded, you will be ineligible for the Order of the Coif graduation honor.

The pass/fail election form can be found here.

The deadline to submit this form is normally several weeks into the semester and can be found on the academic calendar.

Before electing to take any class pass/fail, make sure to familiarize yourself with the student handbook provisions on pass/fail courses.

JD students may not take LLM courses unless they are jointly enrolled in the pertinent LLM program or the course

is labeled as “Co-Listed” on CourseLink.

A short course is a 1-credit class that meets every day for six consecutive days (Monday – Saturday) and then concludes at the end of the week. These courses are often focused on very specific or emerging areas of the law and taught by distinguished visiting scholars and practitioners.

A compressed course is simply a course that does not run for the entire semester. These are often 1 or 2 credits and may run for about half the semester (although this varies). These courses do not fall into the ‘one-week’ timeframe that typifies short courses. Some commonly offered compressed courses include Trusts and Estates Essentials, Start Up Law, and Florida Legal Research Techniques.

There is no limit on the number of these courses you can take. We often do caution students against taking more than 1 or 2 per semester as they often underestimate the amount of work these courses require.

The deadline to drop or add a short or compressed course is the end of the day that course begins.