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The Capstone Seminar: Civil Litigation and Settlement in Theory and Practice
Students interested in pursuing a career in litigation may enroll in the Civil Litigation Capstone Seminar, a year-long upper-level course that involves a substantial research project focusing on civil litigation. Designed to integrate theory with the real-world strategies and financing of litigation, the seminar will integrate classroom instruction and academic research.
This course will expose students to advanced scholarly analysis of the actual workings of the civil litigation system and the role of lawyers and judges, with the goal of providing those who anticipate careers in civil litigation with an opportunity for intensive study of matters likely to reflect and to influence what you do in the real world of the law.
Questions raised in the seminar include:
- Do cases selected for trial differ systematically from cases that settle in the pre-trial phase and, if so, what are the implications of those differences?
- What explains the phenomenon of so-called frivolous litigation, and what can the civil justice system do about it?
- Is the high level of settlement in civil litigation a desirable thing?
- To what extent does the tendency toward settlement alter the role of judges from neutral umpires to case managers, and are those alterations desirable?
- In what ways do modern rules of civil procedure encourage or discourage these trends?
- Should the aggregation of civil lawsuits – for instance, through consolidations or class actions – alter the probability of settlement or the ways in which courts approach the adjudication of aggregate lawsuits?
- How does civil litigation interact with the operation of the modern business firm, particularly when litigation poses a threat to firm viability?
- What role does, or should, the adversarial nature of the American civil justice system play in all of these questions?
