FIU Law’s Academic Excellence Program provides students with resources to help them succeed in law school, pass the bar and develop their skills as legal practitioners.
Benefits of the AEP
Contextualization
Learn how new skills operate within the context of your doctrinal classes and the field of law.
Self-regulation
Monitor and guide your own progress to ensure success during and after law school.
Formative assessment
Understand how and why quality feedback plays a central role in the development of your learning.
Since the AEP began, students have commented repeatedly that the program helps them prepare for exams more effectively and efficiently. The AEP is FIU Law’s way of ensuring that its students have everything they need to maximize their performance.
Available AEP Classes
Rather than simply sitting students in a classroom and keeping academic expectations a secret, we teach you exactly what you need to do to maximize your performance.
1L Year – Fall semester
You will take Introduction to the Study of Law, which meets weekly and is coordinated with each section’s doctrinal professors. As students have put it, this class “teaches you how to do law school.”
The class has three units:
- Fundamental Skills for Law School: Briefing cases, outlining, reading case law and more
- Legal Analysis: How to write law school exams, using hypotheticals similar to those on actual exams
- Exam Prep: Includes a multiple-choice question workshop and a mock exam simulating the real exam environment.
1L Year - Spring semester
Now that you know the fundamentals, our Academic Excellence Classes can focus on exam preparation. These classes meet intermittently to conduct miniature mock exams. These mini-mock exams expose you to the examination environment, with guest appearances by doctrinal faculty to let you know what to expect on exam day.
2L Year
In your 2L year, you may take the Legal Analysis course for two credits. Both Legal Analysis and its companion Evidence course set out to expand your analytical skills for better doctrinal class and bar exam performance.
Extensive, personalized feedback on essays and exam questions have led to strong outcomes for FIU Law students who have taken both courses.
3L Year
First available in your final semester of law school, the U.S. Law and Procedure class (formerly known as FLAP) is a four-credit course that teaches you how to succeed when taking the bar.
One class each week focuses on the Multistate Bar Examination (multiple-choice questions), while another focuses on the state day (essays, performance tests, and multiple-choice questions).
Post-Graduate Bar Success Program
Created by Professor Raul Ruiz, our Director of Bar Preparation, the Bar Exam Success Program (BESP) provides you with critical bar prep resources just after graduation.
These resources include:
- A faculty or alumnus bar exam mentor
- Bar preparation workshops
- Post-graduation logistical support
- Mock essays with personalized feedback