Registration

 

Registration Instructions

Please keep in mind that you are responsible for all of the information listed on this page. Please review it carefully.


Instruction Mode Definitions:

In-Person – Courses in which instruction between instructors and students occur in-person. Students must attend in-person.

Remote – Courses where instruction will be delivered remotely.

Registration Timeline and Deadlines

Schedule Dates
1L Con Law Bidding (1L students only)

Wed, Feb. 8, 12:30 PM – Fri, Feb. 10, 12:30 PM

1L Con Law Bidding results available

Week of Feb. 13

Bidding/Initial Registration:

Mon, Feb. 20, 12:30 PM – Thurs, Feb. 23, 12:30 PM

Bid results available:

Wed, Mar. 1, 5:00 PM

Online Add/Drop begins:

Thurs, Mar. 2, 12:30 PM

Spring Law School classes begin:

Mon, Mar. 20, 8:00 AM

Online Add/Drop closes:

Fri, Mar. 24, 5:00 PM

Faculty consent for Add/Drop begins:

Mon, Mar. 27, 8:30 AM

Deadline to drop Biddable & Non-Biddable Classes without a "W":

Fri, Mar. 31, 5:00 PM

Deadline to adjust credits in variable unit courses:

Fri, Mar. 31, 5:00 PM

Deadline to submit WP/SRP petitions:

Fri, Mar. 31, 5:00 PM

Faculty consent for Add/Drop ends:

Fri, Mar. 31, 5:00 PM

Please note: All times listed reflect Central Time (CT).

Planning and Resources

Below are detailed instructions to assist you with planning for Spring 2023 registration. If you have additional questions after reading this guide, please contact us:

  • Questions about the listed classes, instructions, registration interface, graduation requirements: registrar@law.uchicago.edu
  • Planning schedules over multiple quarters, classes across the midway, curricular choices, general advising: Click here to schedule an appointment with Jesse Landstrom, Sr. Associate Director of Advising and Wellness Programs or dual degree student advisor Lana Ammari, Associate Director of Student Affairs.

Registration Restrictions

Prior to the start of registration, make sure to check my.uchicago.edu for any 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 Student Loan Administration Office, etc.);
  • Have not satisfied your immunization requirements;
  • Have not submitted to the Office of the Registrar an official transcript of undergraduate and/or prior law school work; or
  • Fail to confirm your contact information by the University-stipulated deadline.

For additional information on how to clear a hold, please see the University Registrar’s page on Holds.

Resources

++

Pre/Coreq,Exclusion,Permission

1E

First Year Elective

1L

First Year Required Course

A

Extends Over More 1+ Quarter

BID

Available for Bidding

CL

Cross-Listed

CLN

Clinic

CORE

Taught by Core Faculty

DOC

Doctoroff Business Leadership

EXP

Experiential Learning

LEC

Lecturer Taught

EXAM

Exam class

PR

Prof Responsibility/Ethics

SEM

Seminar

SIM

Simulation

LLM LLM Only Class

SRP

Papers May Meet SRP

WP

May Meet Writing Project Req

Bidding and Initial Registration

During this period, you may bid for biddable classes and/or register for non-biddable classes.

The maximum number of credits, including credits from preregistrations, non-biddable classes, and successful bids which result in enrollments at the conclusion of the bidding process, is 14. 

The number of successful bids will decrease in inverse proportion to the number of non-biddable classes into which you register.  For example, if you are preregistered in a two-credit clinic in which you are continuing from the previous quarter and register for two three-credit non-biddable classes, the total number of credits from successful bids will not exceed six (which would typically mean two successful bids).

It is up to you to balance these two aspects of the initial bidding/registration period.  While offerings that are not part of the bidding process aren’t expected to run out of seats, there are no guarantees that will be the case for all such offerings.

Automatic Registration

Students are often preregistered for certain classes, clinics, and activities by the Registrar staff during the bidding/initial registration period. If the class or clinic is part of the bidding/initial registration process, preregistered students do not need to bid/register. 

Students should review their registrations before and during the bidding/initial registration process.  Some examples are:

  • Clinics: Students continuing participation from previous quarter (as identified by the supervising faculty; if you are preregistered and shouldn’t be, simply drop the clinic and notify the faculty; if you aren’t preregistered and should be, please notify the faculty).
  • Instructor Consent Required Classes/Activities: Workshop: Law and Philosophy, Independent Research projects, and the like.
  • Journals: All journal staff are preregistered contemporaneously with their tenure in the journal, for one credit each quarter.  Please see the Student Handbook for additional details.
  • 1L Classes: See section on First-Year Required Classes.
  • LAWS 70000: All J.S.D. students are preregistered in this class.

Bidding

  • Access bidding through my.uchicago.edu, under the Resources tab – The Law School/Class Bidding
  • Bidding screenshot
  • You may bid for up to five Biddable classes by clicking on “My Classes.” Biddable classes and full classes will show up as CLOSED in this system while bidding is going on.
  • There is no alternate procedure to place your bids: do not mail/fax/email your bids, as such submissions will not be accepted.
  • Late bids cannot be accepted.

Placing your bids:

  • Access my.UChicago and sign-in with your CNET ID and password.
  • Click on the “Bidding” button, in the “Resources/The Law School” drop down.
  • Place your bids in descending order of preference by selecting from the respective dropdown lists (i.e., your top preference should be listed first).
  • Bidding choices
  • 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.  You do not receive an advantage if you don’t use all five bids.
  • Click the Save button.
  • You may then further adjust your bids at any time prior to the closing of the bidding period by clicking the Re-Rank Offerings button.
  • Once you are satisfied with your bids, please click the Save button.  At this juncture, you may continue to review your enrollments, review class lists, view course evaluations, and use any of the many other features offered by the interface. 
  • Once you have concluded your session, please click the Log Out link at the lower left of the screen. 
  • You may return to this page to further adjust your bids at any time during the bidding period.

Initial Registration

During this period, you may register for non-biddable classes for up to 14 credits. Please keep in mind the advice given above about striking the right balance between bids and registration into non-biddable classes.

You may not register for two classes if there is a time conflict with any portion of the class meetings (including pre-scheduled make-up times) or if travel time between classes would make you late for the second class.

To register for non-biddable classes:

  • Access Registration via my.UChicago and sign-in with your CNET ID and password.
  • Select the Spring 2023 term. 
  • Click on My Classes.
  • To search for a particular offering, type the course name, course number, or instructor name in the search box and click the SEARCH icon. 
  • To view all LAWS offerings, click on Law School in the Department drop down in the Refine Search box on the left.  You may also search for courses by attributes, learning outcomes, or day(s) of week.
    Refine Search
  • To add a class from the resulting list of offerings, click anywhere on the offering’s information row and then click the Add button.
  • To review your current schedule at any time, click on the My Classes link at the top of the page.  From the ensuing page you may drop enrollments by clicking on the Drop button next to the enrollment or you may swap the enrollment with another yet to be selected offering by clicking the Swap button (this comes in handy if you are afraid of dropping an offering before securing a seat in another).
  • To end your session and safely exit, please click the Sign Out link at the top right of the screen (in your name drop down).

How Bids Are Processed

After the Bidding period closes, bids are generally processed as follows:

  • Your highest bid will be processed first, with all other students’ highest bids. 
  • If your bid is successful, you will be registered for the class/clinic.  Your bid will succeed if:
    • There are more available seats than other bids for the class/clinic; or,
    • There were fewer seats than bids and your bid was randomly selected.
  • If your bid for an oversubscribed class does not result in an enrollment, you will be placed on a waitlist and your next bid will be weighted, allowing for a better chance of success. 
  • Your second bid will be processed next, and so on, until all your bids have been processed.

Additional factors the algorithm might consider include:

  • Year of study (e.g., for classes that give preference to 3L students over 2Ls);
  • Reserved Seats (e.g., in a few classes, 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 bids for a different one); and,
  • Disqualifying factors (e.g., 3L students who have completed nine Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab Clinic credits may not register for additional Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab Clinic sections). 

Faculty may choose to alter the priority system for their class based on the particular nature of the class. 

Some offerings will still have seats at the conclusion of the bidding process.  Open seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis during the add/drop period.

Successful bids will translate into enrollments.  You will be able to see which bids were successful by checking your schedule under “My Classes” after 5:00 p.m. on Wed., March 1. 

If an offering for which you bid doesn’t appear in your schedule, you will be waitlisted unless a successful bid would have put you over 14 credits overall. In that case, you will not be enrolled or waitlisted.  Please see the section on Waitlists below for additional details.

Online Add/Drop

  • During this period, you may use the Add/Drop function 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.
  • 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 quarter.
  • 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 any class, you must do so by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, Mar. 31.  Afterwards, you may only withdraw from such an offering, and you will receive a W mark on your transcript. 
  • The deadline to drop abbreviated classes that conclude prior to the end of the Online Add/Drop Period or start after the end of the Online Add/Drop Period without a “W” is the end of the first day the class meets.

Faculty Consent for Add/drop

  • During this period, faculty consent is required to add or drop any class. In light of ABA requirements concerning class attendance, faculty generally do 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 or drop, be sure to include your full name, student number, class number, and title. Please use your uchicago.edu email account when emailing us (registrar@law.uchicago.edu).

Withdrawals

The deadline to drop classes without a “W” is 5:00 p.m. on Friday, Mar. 31. You will receive a W on your transcript when you drop a biddable class after this deadline. Once the deadline has passed, under no circumstances can a “W” be removed from a student’s record.

After 5:00 p.m. on Friday, Mar. 31, you may not ordinarily add or drop any enrollments. A student who drops a class after the deadline (permission from the faculty and the Dean of Students is required to do so) will receive a “W” (up to the last day of classes) or a failing grade (after the last day of classes) on their transcript for that course. As a rule, a “W” will not be removed from a student’s record once the deadline has passed.

Waitlists

If a class fills, a waitlist is established. After bidding results are posted, you can add yourself to a waitlist. If you no longer wish to be on a particular waitlist you can also drop yourself from that waitlist. Here are the instructions on how to add/drop yourself from a waitlist:

 

Available seats that become available 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 24 hours to enroll into that class.  If you do not take action 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 first class meeting.  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.

Certain classes and clinics 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 Clinical and Experiential Programs section), independent research credits may range from one to three credits, etc.

By default, initially, you will be registered 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/ Last Day to Adjust Enrollment/Credits. You must email registrar@law.uchicago.edu and copy the instructor, or send the instructor’s approval to registrar@law.uchicago.edu by the deadline to adjust enrollment/credits in the Academic Calendar. Bear in mind the 14 credit per term limit.

Taking First Year Classes

Please note:

  • Not all professors allow non first-year students into first-year required classes.  Those who do typically set a cap.
  • You may not register online.  Please send an email to the Law School Registrar (registrar@law.uchicago.edu) requesting the class.
  • You may not register in only one quarter of a two-quarter class.  You must register in all quarters.
  • Available seats are assigned in the following order:
    • J.D. Students repeating a class
    • Transfer J.D. Students
    • LL.M. and MLS students
  • J.D. students are assigned to one of the available sections by the Registrar. Other students are assigned by the Registrar, provided there are available seats. LL.M. students should refer to the pertinent email(s) from the LLM Director concerning additional enrollment procedures/rules for each quarter/class.

Class Attendance

  • Regular class attendance is required as a condition for receiving credit. 
  • It is particularly important 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.

Textbooks

You can find required and optional textbooks for a class via the Class Search function in my.UChicago.edu.

Click on the desired class

Class search in my.UChicago

On the following page see the Barnes and Noble link at the bottom of the page. If an instructor has posted required and/or optional textbooks they will be displayed via this link. Law School textbooks are primarily sold through the Barnes and Noble campus bookstore.

Link to Barnes and Noble

Please note that each Canvas site also includes a link to required and/or optional textbooks for each class.

Link in Canvas

The Barnes and Noble site will list hardcopy and ebook options which they are able to sell. If you would like to purchase an ebook only edition and do not see it listed, you may need to purchase that version through the publisher. (Barnes and Noble is not able to sell all ebook versions.)

You may wish to check the Final Exam Schedule before deciding whether to purchase a digital version of a textbook. If a class has a final in-class exam and does not allow internet access during the exam, you will want to be sure that you are able to download the textbook to your laptop in advance of the exam. Some textbooks are only accessible online or you may find that only a portion of a textbook can be downloaded. Therefore, in some cases it may be best to purchase the hard copy version of a textbook.