THE ADVOCATE 727
VOL. 80 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2022
TRU LAW
FACULTY NEWS
By Ryan Gauthier*
TRU LAW FINISHES FIRST YEAR UNDER REVISED CURRICULUM
TRU Law has finished its first year with its new curriculum. In the spring
of 2021, the TRU faculty voted to make some changes to its first-year and
upper-year courses. The changes were modest, reflecting TRU Law’s vision
to provide “students a well-rounded, practice-relevant education in the fundamental
knowledge and core competencies that lawyers need to succeed
and to serve their clients well”.
The updated first-year program still sees students take the standard
courses of Constitutional Law, Contracts, Crime: Law and Procedure, Property
and Torts throughout the year. Meanwhile the courses of Law, Administration
and Policy, which focuses on sources of Canadian law, and
Fundamental Legal Skills, which focuses on legal writing, are now both onesemester
courses graded on a pass/fail basis.
In the upper-year period, students will still take several mandatory
courses. All second-year students will take Administrative Law, Civil Procedure,
Dispute Resolution, Evidence, and Truth and Rebuilding Canadian
Indigenous Legal Relations. Students are also required to take Business
Associations and Ethical Lawyering at some point in their upper years. This
is largely similar to the prior upper-year requirements. The addition of the
Truth and Rebuilding Canadian Indigenous Legal Relations course responds
to the Truth and Reconciliation Call to Action 28.
In the upper-year period, students must also choose an elective course
that fulfils a “perspectives” requirement. This is a course that addresses
legal theory, philosophy or perspectives-related learning objectives.
Finally, students must take a course that fulfills the “writing requirement”.
While the previous writing requirement focused only on academic-style
* Ryan Gauthier is an associate professor at the TRU Faculty of Law.