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As the coronavirus continues to infect people across the country, the law school community is working on ways to manage teaching the future lawyers of America who will someday turn pandemics into practice areas. Thus far, three law schools — including Columbia Law, one of the most elite schools in the nation — have closed their campuses for in-person classes and are moving their courses and exams to an online format.
We’ve now learned of four additional T14 law schools that are doing the same exact thing in an effort to spare their students and faculty members from possibily contracting COVID-19.
This past weekend, Stanford Law announced announced on its website that “[i]n-person classes will be moved to an online format for the last two weeks of the winter quarter.” Stanford is on a quarterly system, with spring semester beginning at the end of the month. That means students are entering their exam period right now, so we wonder how that’s working out for them. Surely the extra stress is doing wonders for their studying right now.
Next up, we’ve got Berkeley Law, which announced yesterday that it would be suspending all in-person classes:
- Beginning Tuesday, March 10, we will be suspending most in-person classes and will be offering ALL lecture courses (including discussion sections), seminar instruction and examination through alternative modalities (e.g., Zoom, course capture, etc.) through Spring Break.
- Instructors who do not have remote learning processes in place by March 10 will be given a two-day period (March 10 and 11) during which they may cancel classes, to allow them time to establish such processes and to ready their course(s) for resumption online by Thursday, March 12. Students, please look for communications from instructors about plans for individual courses.
Remote course instruction will last through spring break, which ends on March 29. Depending on what’s going on with the coronavirus situation at the end of the month, the school may or may not decide to end the suspension in-person classes.
Over at NYU Law, students will meet in their final in-person classes today, and beginning on Wednesday, the school will move to a remote course instruction system. From the school’s website:
[B]eginning on Wednesday, March 11 we will move to remote instruction. All classes should meet remotely at their regularly scheduled time.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, March 11 -13, will allow us to test for the transition to remote instruction.
Spring break will commence as planned at the end of this week. If students wish to leave following their last class on Tuesday, they can participate in classes remotely from their homes for the rest of the week.
After spring break, NYU Law will continue to hold classes online until March 27. Sometime during that week, the administration will let students know whether they’ll continue with remote class sessions.
Finally, Harvard Law announced this morning that all classes would move to an online format after spring break, with classes continuing on campus this week.
In accordance with the University’s decision, Harvard Law School will shift from in-person instruction to remote teaching and learning beginning Monday, March 23, the day classes are scheduled to resume after Spring Break.
We will continue to closely monitor this situation and may have additional updates.
What is your law school doing to protect students and faculty from coronavirus? Please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “Coronavirus Response”).
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.