Overview

With your Legal Studies degree from University of Maryland University College, you'll be equipped to conduct legal analysis, write and draft legal documents, and perform research in the legal environment.

In your core legal studies degree courses, you'll examine the organization, function, and processes of the lawmaking institutions in the American legal system, as well as the role of the paralegal in the legal system and the governing rules of legal ethics.

Through your coursework, you will learn how to:

• Conduct research using appropriate resources to identify relevant, current legal authority

• Draft documents that reflect critical thinking and legal reasoning to inform, evaluate, and advocate on legal issues

• Apply an understanding of legal concepts and procedures to efficiently and ethically support the resolution of legal disputes

• Synthesize relevant information and complete a wide variety of forms and documents used to meet client objectives

In past projects, students have had the opportunity to:

• Draft legal forms, such as petition for divorce, power of attorney, and identification and evaluation of estate property, for submission to court, using legal terms and nomenclature, as well as knowledge of a particular case

• Review the elements of a statute and assess its application to a set of facts

• Review a current case or statutory law and produce a legal theory, approach, or case study to support a hypothetical client's case