Winter 2012 Registration Information
If you are a J.D., joint J.D./Other Degree, LL.M., J.S.D., or visiting J.D. student, please read the following instructions prior to registering. If you are not in one of these categories, please see the instructions at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/students/petitions/nonlawregistration.
Please note: All times listed below reflect Central Standard Time (CST, Chicago Time).
The registration process comprises six main stages:
- Planning
- Bidding
- Online Registration
- Add/Drop Period
- Withdrawal Period
- After Classes End
Planning
Please read the Student Handbook sections on planning your Law School education and graduation requirements.
Please review all available information concerning Winter 2012 offerings. Some of the many resources available to you include:
- Faculty pages: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/people/faculty
- Course descriptions: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/courses
- Time schedules: http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/view.php?dept=LAWS&term=449 (available after November 1).
- Summary of meeting times chart: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/Schedule.pdf
- Exam schedule: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/academics/examinfo
- Clinics and experiential learning activities pages: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/clinics
- Taking classes “across the Midway:” http://www.law.uchicago.edu/students/acrossthemidway
- The academic calendar: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/students/academiccalendar
Keep in mind any prerequisites you may need to complete during this quarter in order to be eligible to register/participate in certain classes/activities in subsequent quarters.
You may contact Shannon Bartlett or the Dean of Students for additional individual assistance in planning your schedule.
And, please, read the instructions below.
Bidding
You may bid for up to five classes, one of which may be an experiential learning activity (such as a clinic).
You place your bids online via an easy to use webpage interface. The webpage will be activated at noon, Monday, November 7, and will be active for 72 hours, until noon, Thursday, November 10. There is no alternate procedure to place your bids: do not email/fax/mail your bids, as such submissions cannot be accepted.
We urge you to place your bids early. While there is no intrinsic advantage in doing so, were you to run into technical difficulties while attempting to place your bids, you will have ample time to resolve the underlying issue before the bidding period ends. Late bids will not be accepted because bids are processed within minutes of the closing of the bidding period.
If you cannot access the interface due to a registration hold, please contact the administrative unit that placed the hold. The Law School Office of the Registrar does not place holds nor does it have the ability to remove holds placed by other units. However, if you have any questions about the process, the interface, or run into any technical difficulties when placing your bids, we will be glad to assist. Please contact us by emailing registrar@law.uchicago.edu.
Please see http://www.law.uchicago.edu/bidding for a list of offerings included in the bidding process. Carefully review the number of available seats, and all restrictions and preferences listed therein.
To place your bids:
- Have your CNetID and CNet password ready.
- Access the bidding interface via the link at the bottom of this page.
- Place your bids in descending order of preference in the Classes portion of the screen by selecting from the respective dropdown lists.
- If you want to bid for an experiential learning activity, select the Clinic option from the dropdown list. An additional screen will open at a later stage allowing you to place your bids for all available activities.
- You may place up to five bids, but you may place fewer bids as well. You may not bid more than once for any given class. If you skip a line (e.g., rank bids 1, 3 and 4 only), you may be disadvantaged by the processing algorithm.
- Click the Save Classes button.
- If one of your bids was Clinic, a new screen will open allowing you to bid for up to five available experiential learning activities. Click the Save Clinics button when you have concluded ranking your preferred activities.
- You may then further adjust your bids.
- Once you are satisfied with your bids, please logout and close your browser page. You may return to this page to further adjust your bids at any time during the bidding period.
Bids are generally processed as follows:
Your highest bid will be processed first, with all other student’s highest bids.
If your bid is successful, you will be registered for the class/activity. Your bid will succeed if:
- There are more available seats than other bids for the class/activity; or,
- If there were fewer seats than bids and your bid was randomly selected.
If your bid does not result in an enrollment, you will be placed on a waitlist and your next bid will be weighted, for a better chance of success.
Your second bid will be processed next, and so on, until all your bids have been processed.
If your bid is for an experiential learning activity, you will be registered in the highest ranked activity with available seats; any unsuccessful bids for activities will result in you being added to the waitlist for the activity; any activity bids ranked lower than your successful activity bid will be ignored.
Additional factors the algorithm considers include:
- Year of study (e.g., for classes that preference 3L students over 2Ls);
- Set-asides (e.g., in any given class, some seats might be reserved for LL.M. students);
- Preferences (e.g., a student who has not yet had a clinical opportunity shall receive preference with respect to a student who has already participated in one clinic and seeks to enroll in a different one); and,
- Disqualifying factors (e.g., 3L students who have completed nine Corporate Lab credits may not register for additional Corporate Lab sections).
Faculty may choose to alter the priority system for their class based on the particular nature of the class.
Some classes will still have seats at the conclusion of the bidding process. Seats that remain vacant and unallotted will be available on a first-come, first-served basis during the Online Registration period.
Successful bids will translate into enrollments. You will be able to see which bids were successful via cMore starting at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 11. If an offering for which you bid doesn’t show in cMore, it means you have been waitlisted (or your request was ignored; for experiential learning activities only, and only after a successful bid). Please see the section on Waitlisted classes below for additional details.
Online Registration
During Online Registration (and the subsequent online portion of the Add/Drop Period) you may register for offerings not available during the Bidding period, offerings that didn’t close during the Bidding period, cross-listed classes, Independent Research projects, classes from other campus units, and otherwise adjust your schedule via the University Graduate Registration System. You will need your CNetID and CNet password to login to the system. You may access the registration interface via the link at the bottom of this page starting at 9 a.m. on Monday, November 14 and ending at 5 p.m. on Friday, December 23.
You must enroll for at least nine credit hours each quarter in order to fulfill your degree requirements, be eligible for certain types of financial aid/loans/scholarships/etc., meet specific visa requirements, satisfy VA requirements, etc. LL.M. students may not count non-law school classes towards this total. Law school classes have a subject code of “LAWS” (e.g., LAWS 40101).
During the Online Registration period you may register for up to seven classes, for an aggregate maximum of 13 credits. This includes Independent Research projects, multi-quarter offerings (clinic programs, multi-quarter seminars, workshops, etc.), and offerings for which you may have been pre-registered.
If you wish to take more than 13 credit hours, you are required to submit a Petition to Take More Than 13 Credits, before the end of the end of Add/Drop Period. You may not take more than 14 credits per quarter, under any circumstances.
Remember to register for any multi-quarter workshop in which you are participating as this does not happen automatically.
Once you have completed your registration, we recommend that you print or otherwise electronically save a copy of the registration page for your records.
Joint-degree students not in residence at the Law School during this quarter: Your regular course registration will need to be processed through the division in which you are in residence; the Law School does not require you to petition to take LAWS offerings.
You must obtain faculty permission to register for any offering designated as “Instructor Approval Required.” If you don’t obtain permission and register, you will be dropped.
Classes that have a waitlist do not appear in the list of available options, even if seats appear to be available. During this stage, access to these classes is strictly via the established waitlist. Please see the section on waitlists below for additional information.
As a courtesy to your fellow students, you should promptly drop classes in which you are no longer interested.
Add/Drop Period
Starting at 9 a.m., on Thursday, December 29, you may use the Add/Drop function of the University Graduate Registration System to make changes to your enrollments.
You are strongly encouraged to finalize your schedule by the end of the first week of classes, if not earlier.
You may drop but not add closed classes. To add a closed class after the quarter begins you must attend the first class meeting, obtain faculty permission, and contact the Office of the Registrar via email. If there remains a waitlist for the class, the faculty may choose to offer available seats according to the order in which students appear on the waitlist.
If you wish to drop a limited enrollment class (any offering included in the Bidding process) you must do so by 9:00 a.m., Tuesday, January 10. If you drop such an offering afterwards, you will receive a W mark on your transcript. There are no exceptions.
Starting at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, January 10, and until the end of the Add/Drop Period at 5 p.m. on Friday, January 20, faculty consent is required to add any class. In light of ABA requirements concerning class attendance, faculty generally does not allow students to add a class after the first week. Consent should be delivered to the Office of the Registrar. If you are forwarding an email from your professor granting you permission to register, be sure to include your full name, student number, class number, and title. Emails lacking this information will be returned.
You may drop non-limited enrollment classes online without consent through 5 p.m. on Friday, January 13.
You may drop non-limited enrollment classes with faculty consent through 5 p.m. on Friday, January 20. If you are forwarding an email from your professor granting you permission to drop, be sure to include your full name, student ID, class number, and title. Emails lacking this information will be returned.
You may not remain registered past the end of the Add/Drop Period in two classes if there is a time conflict with any portion of the classes meetings (including pre-scheduled make-up times) or if travel time between classes would make you late for the second class.
If you sit for an exam or submit work for an offering in which you were not duly registered, you will receive neither a grade nor credit. Please be sure to register for all the offerings you will undertake this Winter quarter, even if continuing from a prior quarter.
Withdrawal Period
After 5 p.m. on Friday, January 20, you may not ordinarily add or drop any enrollments. Permission to drop without a mark of W will only be granted under extraordinary and compelling circumstances (e.g., death in the immediate family).
You may withdraw with a mark of W by permission from the faculty and the Dean of Students. If permission is denied, a grade of 155 (or F for P/F classes) will be recorded in your transcript. Please see the Student Handbook for further details.
After Classes End
You may neither drop nor withdraw from an offering after 5 p.m. on Monday, March 5, the last day of regularly scheduled classes (or the last day of class meetings for an abbreviated class, whichever comes earlier). Students who fail to complete their coursework in a timely manner as outlined in the syllabus will receive a failing grade of 155 (or F for P/F classes).
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As you progress through the previously outlined registration cycles, please keep in mind the following pertinent information.
Variable-Credit Enrollments
Certain classes and experiential learning activities offer variable credit, where credits earned will depend on the nature and amount of coursework/type of assessment. For example, some classes will award two credits if you take the final exam but three credits if you write a research paper instead, clinics award credits commensurate with the amount of work performed (see the Clinics and Experiential Learning Activities section), Independent Research credits may range from one to three credits, etc.
For all classes, by default, the system will register you for the minimum credits available. If you intend to earn a higher number of credits, make certain that you are aware of the requirements for the additional credit(s), and inform both the instructor and the Office of the Registrar of your intentions via email, prior to the end of the Add/Drop Period.
Please see the Clinics and Experiential Learning Activities section for details on adjusting credits for such activities.
Please see the Independent Research section for details on credits for independent research projects.
Waitlists
If a class fills during Bidding, a waitlist is established. Students may verify their position on the waitlist via the University Student Portal (my.uchicago.edu, Academics tab, My Courses and Grades, Additional Information). Students are notified if/when a seat becomes available prior to the start of the quarter. Seats are offered to student(s) on the waitlist according to ranking on the waitlist. If you are eligible to enroll from a waitlist, you will be notified via email. You will have a short time (typically 24 hours) to reply, confirming your continued interest in the class. If you don't reply within the stipulated period, the seat will be offered to the student who is next on the waitlist.
Waitlists are provided to faculty prior to the start of class. You should always attend the first meeting of a class in which you are waitlisted, as faculty often admit students from the waitlist at that time.
Seminars and Simulation Classes
You are permitted to enroll in up to four seminars and/or simulation classes per academic year, no more than three of which may be taught by individuals who are neither tenured professors, tenure track professors, clinical professors, visiting professors, emeritus professors, nor senior lecturers. In some instances, preferences are granted to third-year students. While many seminars and simulation classes can accommodate all of the registering students, on occasion, certain seminars and simulation classes will be oversubscribed; enrollment into seminars and simulation classes is typically via the bidding process (see Bidding). No more than twenty students will, as a rule, be admitted to a seminar. In some seminars, enrollment is limited to a smaller number. Regardless of whether a seminar or simulation class has a waitlist, all seminars and simulation classes are considered “limited enrollment classes.” Multi-quarter seminars with a total aggregate of up to three units count as one seminar, as two seminars if more than three units, and so forth.
With the exception of Greenberg Seminars, all multi-quarter workshops (e.g., the Law and Economics Workshop, the Legal Scholarship Workshop, etc.) and seminars are considered seminars under the Seminars and Simulations Classes rule.
Greenberg Seminars
If you registered for a Greenberg Seminar in Autumn, you don’t need to register again this quarter. You may, however, choose to allocate the credit to this quarter (provided you remain otherwise registered fulltime in Autumn). To do so please email the Assistant Registrar.
Clinics and Experiential Learning Activities
Second- and third-year J.D. students are eligible to participate in clinical and experiential programs. Clinical and experiential programs are not available to first-year students. LL.M. students might be eligible to register for the Immigrant Children's Advocacy Project Clinic (please contact the clinical director to ascertain what opportunities might exist for the Spring quarter; there are no seats available for bidding this quarter).
All available seats in all clinics are included in the quarterly bidding process managed by the Office of the Registrar.
Not all seats in all clinics will be available for bidding. Most seats are reserved for students continuing their clinical enrollment from Autumn 2011. Other seats are reserved for students who were placed on a waitlist during prior quarters clinical lotteries and who will be grandfathered in. If you receive confirmation from a clinical faculty that you have been admitted for the Winter quarter under these grandfathering provisions, or if you are continuing enrollment in a clinic from Autumn 2011, you do not need to bid for a seat, you will be automatically registered. All other students must bid for newly available seats.
The following clinical offerings are currently scheduled for the 2011-12 academic year, and may be amended from time to time to reflect changes or additions of new clinics:
Civil Rights Clinic: Police Accountability
Complex Mental Health Litigation Clinic
Corporate Lab: Litigation Clinic
Corporate Lab: Transactional Clinic
Criminal and Juvenile Justice Project Clinic
Employment Discrimination Clinic
Exoneration Project Clinic
Federal Criminal Justice Clinic
Gendered Violence and the Law Clinic
Housing Initiative Clinic
Immigrant Children's Advocacy Project Clinic
Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship
Mental Health Advocacy Clinic
Mental Health Litigation Clinic
Poverty and Housing Law Clinic
Prosecution and Defense Clinic
The following rules apply to the clinical courses listed above:
- No more than sixteen credits shall be awarded for clinical work.
- The maximum number of credits students may earn for a given clinic shall be seven, except for the Corporate Lab: Transactional Clinic, in which students may earn up to nine credits.
- An Independent Research project (499) may not be used to evade applicable maximums or other rules regarding clinic participation.
- Students may enroll in a clinic for no more than three credits in any one quarter, with the following exception: a clinic that mandates two quarters of enrollment, and does not permit more than two quarters of enrollment, may offer one three-credit quarter and one four-credit quarter.
- Students are awarded one credit for work averaging five hours per week per quarter, subject to the applicable maximums set forth above. Students are expected to keep a record of the time they spend in practical work done in conjunction with the clinic.
- No student may be enrolled in two or more clinics simultaneously. This rule may be waived in exceptional circumstances with written permission of the relevant clinical supervisor(s). Students may enroll in more than one clinic during their time in law school. If there is more demand for a clinic than supply in any given year, a student who has not yet had a clinical opportunity shall receive preference over a student who has already participated in one clinic and seeks to enroll in a different one.
- The authority to confirm enrollment in a clinic is vested in the respective clinical supervisor(s) who ensure that students have completed all the necessary pre-requisites, met all relevant enrollment criteria (such as language skills), and are otherwise qualified to participate in the program. Expectations regarding the duration of the student’s involvement with the clinic and total credits per quarter must be arranged with the clinical supervisor prior to enrollment.
- Students must register for each quarter in which they are participating in a clinic. The registration system will allocate to each enrollment the default minimum credits for the quarter. Adjustments based on actual work performed will be reported by the supervisors at the conclusion of each quarter to the Office of the Registrar.
- With the exception of the Corporate Lab: Transactional Clinic, grades for clinical work are posted once, for all quarters of involvement, at the conclusion of the student’s involvement with the clinic, and students receive the same grade for all quarters. For the Corporate Lab: Transactional Clinic, grades are posted each quarter, and students may receive different grades for each quarter.
- Most clinics have a seminar component that students may be required to take during their participation in the clinic. Please check the schedule for meeting days/times, as you may not register for other offerings that meet contemporaneously.
You should keep in mind that you need at least nine credit hours per quarter. If you are counting on a clinic to make it to nine credits, you must be sure to earn enough hours in the clinic, or you will fall below nine credit hours for that quarter, which can have serious consequences. Additionally, you should not rely on potential extra clinical credits that you have not yet earned in order to achieve the 105 credits needed to graduate; a few students who have done so have had to postpone graduation to a subsequent quarter because they did not earn enough hours to merit the extra credit(s) in the clinic.
Independent Research Projects
Independent Research (commonly called a “499” after the old registration number) gives students the opportunity to work closely with a professor on an academic topic of mutual interest.
Independent Research may be supervised by a member of the faculty (including Emeriti, Visiting Faculty, Schwartz Lecturers, and Senior Lecturers at the Law School, as well as tenured university faculty who maintain permanent offices in the law school, but excluding Bigelow and other Fellows as well as other Lecturers in Law) who is in full-time residence at the Law School. Visiting faculty may supervise independent research if they are willing to do so and if they are available to work with students until the independent research is completed, which in many cases will be after their visit has ended. Lecturers may not supervise independent research without advance approval. Students who would like to work with a lecturer on an independent study must submit a request to the Rules and Petitions Committee (via the Dean of Students) for advance permission to do so.
Please follow these steps to register for a 499:
- Discuss the project with the faculty member;
- Obtain the faculty member’s written consent to supervise the project via his or her signature on a properly completed Independent Research Petition (available at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/students/petitions/independentresearch); and
- Submit the form to the Assistant Registrar no later than the last day of the Add/Drop Period.
Some students use the 499 as an opportunity to attempt to “write-on” to a journal. Please refer to Section 1.15 (JOURNALS) of the Student Handbook for a more detailed description of the process of writing onto a journal and the pros and cons of using a 499 to “write on.”
First Year Classes
If you need/want to take a first-year class, please note the following:
You may take a first year class if:
- You need to repeat a class.
- You transferred into the J.D. program and need to take a required first year class you didn’t take at your prior school.
- You are an LL.M. student.
Please note:
- Not all Professors allow non first-year students into first-year classes. Those who do typically set a cap.
- You may not register online. Please send an email to the Office of the Registrar (registrar@law.uchicago.edu) requesting the class.
- Available seats are assigned in the following order:
- J.D. Students repeating a class
- Transfer J.D. Students
- LL.M. students
- J.D. students repeating a first year class are assigned to one of the available sections randomly, all others are assigned as per their choice, provided there are available seats. After seating repeating students, if there are more requests than seats for a given section, seats will be allocated randomly as well.
Taking Classes in Other Academic Units
For classes at Booth, please see the following section.
For details on registering for classes “across the Midway,” please see http://www.law.uchicago.edu/students/acrossthemidway.
Booth Classes
If you are interested in taking a class at the Chicago Booth School of Business (Booth), please follow the instructions at http://departments.chicagobooth.edu/srs/nonmbastudent/Law.asp. You do not need to submit a Petition to Take a Non-Law School Course for Booth classes.
Booth will processes law students request in batch, on Monday, January 9. As soon as Booth finished processing the requests, you will receive an email confirmation of your registration status. If you decide not to take the Booth class for which you registered, you must immediately notify Booth and the Law School Registrar no later than the end of the third week of classes. Booth registration, course attendance, and grading are governed by all applicable Booth rules.
Booth registration information for non-Booth students, including links to course information, syllabi, exam schedules, and deadlines, is available at http://departments.chicagobooth.edu/srs/nonmbastudent/index.asp.
Information about courses is at http://boothportal.chicagobooth.edu/portal/server.pt/community/courses/205 and about seat availability is at http://departments.chicagobooth.edu/srs/nonmbastudent/seat%20availability.asp.
Students taking a Booth course who would like to elect Pass/Fail grading are required to complete the Pass/Fail Request form and return it to Linnea Battles by Friday, week 4 of the quarter. After this deadline no changes can be made to a Pass/Fail request. Some Booth faculty members do not allow Pass/Fail grading. Reference the No Pass/Fail List for restrictions; no exceptions are granted.
Course Materials
Information concerning books for each Winter 2012 class is available via the University Time Schedules at http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/view.php?dept=LAWS&term=449 (available after November 1). Simply locate the class and click on the link that appears on the last column, under the Course Materials Vendor header. Additional information concerning supplemental materials for sale via the Law School copy center will be made available here as it becomes available.
Attending the First Class
Regular class attendance is required as a condition for receiving credit. It is particularly important that you attend the first meeting of a class to confirm enrollment. Many faculty will drop you from the roster if you don’t attend the first meeting. You may not, however, rely on this process as the mechanism to drop classes. You are responsible for dropping classes in which you no longer intend to be enrolled, or risk receiving a W or 155 (or F for P/F classes) mark on your transcript.
Similar Classes
Certain pairs of offerings will cover substantially similar material. Accordingly, students may not receive credit for both. Examples of such overlapping offerings include the following (this is not meant to be an exhaustive listing):
- Con Law II and Con Law IV
- International Law and Public International Law
- Trial Advocacy and Intensive Trial Practice Workshop
- The same course taught by different professors (or the same professor), e.g., Corporate Finance here and at Booth.
It is impossible to list all of the similar classes either inside or outside the Law School. If you note similarities in the descriptions, you should contact the Registrar or the Dean of Students to determine whether both classes may be taken.
Petitions
For actions outside the usual procedures, petitions are available online at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/students/academics/petitions. Petitions are required to do the following:
- Take More Than 13 Credits
- Take a Non-Law School Course for Credit
- Reschedule an Exam
- Register for an Independent Research
- Register as a Non-Law Student
Registration Restrictions
You may not register for classes if you:
- Have registration restrictions placed by any office of the University (such as the Bursar’s Office, the Financial Aid Office, etc.);
- Have not satisfied your immunization requirements; or
- Have not submitted to the Office of the Registrar an official transcript of undergraduate work.
Miscellanea
|
Law School Credit Hours to University Units Conversion Table |
|
|
Credit Hours |
University Units |
|
1 |
50.00 |
|
2 |
75.00 |
|
3 |
100.00 |
|
4 |
150.00 |
|
5 |
175.00 |
|
6 |
200.00 |
Confirmation of all enrollments is vested in the faculty. If you do not meet class/activity prerequisite(s) you will be disenrolled. If you are found to have registered for duplicative coursework (arising from any prior class, at the University of Chicago, or any other institution), you will be disenrolled also.
By clicking on the link below you certify that you have read and understand all the registration instructions contained herein. You further attest that you will fully comply with the following provision of ABA Standard 304(f) “A student may not be employed in more than 20 hours per week.”