Practical courses

Here below is an overview of the numerous practical courses offered within the degree programme in Law. Each category is characterised by a different teaching method and learning experience. 

Practical courses provide an introduction to some real-life applications of law, and encourage students to draw on their legal knowledge and skills to solve the problems with which they are presented. This learning by doing approach is an ideal complement to the theoretical and systematic training that is traditionally imparted to law students.

Most practical courses are stand-alone and can be included in the study plan as optional or elective activities, while others are supplementary modules of larger courses (including mandatory ones). In this latter case, students can choose to take the practical course in question in addition to the standard set of lectures of the core course.  

Courses included in this category allow students to get a first grasp of the practical applications of law and to put their skills into practice in order to tackle real-life problems, for example by contributing to settling a real dispute, by providing a service to a given target audience, or by disseminating information to the public regarding a specific legal topic. As a matter of fact, legal clinics can revolve around various core activities, for example providing legal assistance to a litigant or taking part in a legal information helpdesk.

When participating in the activities of a legal clinic, students are assisted not only by instructors of the Faculty, but also by legal professionals. As a general rule, legal clinics are regulated by ad-hoc agreements or protocols, which are entered into between the University and a professional order or another partner entity.

A Moot Court is a simulation of a judicial proceeding, which gives students a chance to put their learning into practice by replicating a real-life courtroom scenario. Every year, numerous moot court competitions are organised at prestigious universities and associations, both in Italy and abroad, on the most diverse legal topics. They usually revolve around the analysis of a complex case, often with multiple procedural and substantive issues at stake. The competition is typically organised in several elimination rounds. Some moot courts attract participants from over a hundred different universities, each of them participating with a team of students led by one or more tutors.

These courses provide students with an opportunity to deepen their study of certain legal matters, by staging a simulation of a real-life legal dispute. Students may be asked to argue the case orally and/or to submit pleadings to an adjudicating body made up of lecturers or external experts. In seminar competitions, students are divided in groups: at each stage of the simulation, those who have argued the case better advance to the next round.

These courses focus on how to draft legal opinions and pleadings, based on real cases that have already been argued in court, or on a fictitious case invented by the lecturer. A core feature of these courses is that written assignments submitted by students are reviewed and corrected, either individually by the lecturer or collectively in class.

While these activities do not include frontal teaching, they are still difficult to label under the previous categories. It is the case of courses which take place in a particular setting (for instance correctional facilities), or which require students to play a prominent active role, for example by preparing a presentation or discussing a case in front of the class.