Health Law Curriculum
The health law curriculum offers a wide range of courses, seminars, and clinical practice opportunities. You do not have to wait until your second or third year to begin work in the health law curriculum. Each year we offer an elective course in health law to first-year students.
The following is a representative sampling of core and elective health law offerings. For the full list, please consult the Academic Bulletin.
- Antitrust law
- Bioethics and Law
- Discrimination in Employment
- Genetics and the Law
- Governance, Risk Management and Compliance
- Healthcare Controversies
- Healthcare Finance and Regulation
- Healthcare & Human Rights
- Health Law and Policy Lab
- Health Matrix Seminar
- HIPAA
- Hospital Risk Management
- Information Privacy Law
- Nonprofit Organizations Law
- Pretrial Practice: Medical Malpractice
- Psychiatry & Law
- Public Health Law
- Reproductive Rights Lab/Seminar
- Workers’ Compensation
Additional Courses to Pursue
Health expertise at CWRU isn’t limited to the law school. We encourage you to take advantage of the university community’s outstanding resources by taking courses in other schools and programs, such as:
- Health Disparities (School of Medicine)
- Health Finance (Weatherhead School of Management)
- Health Policy and Management Decisions (Political Science)
- Death, Dying, & Euthanasia: Netherlands and the USA (Philosophy)
- Health Management and Policy (School of Medicine)
- Issues in Health Policy and Service Delivery (Anthropology)
“As an extern with MetroHealth, I had the opportunity to lead an interdepartmental meeting to present my findings and provide guidance on policy implementation. This experience in health law helped me understand how lawyers serve as translators between the law and practical hospital operations, and strengthened my confidence in communicating complex information clearly.”
Health Law Expertise
As a student at the law school, you don’t need to pursue the formal JD concentration to take advantage of our health law expertise. Get to know a few of the centers and extracurriculars in which you can participate.
Milton and Charlotte Kramer Law Clinic
The Milton and Charlotte Kramer Law Clinic is part of the law school’s Kramer Law Clinic Center. The clinic operates like a law firm within the law school, enabling you to apply the skills you learn in the classroom to real clients and real cases.
Students in the Milton and Charlotte Kramer Law Clinic have primary responsibility for their own caseload. If you participate, you’ll serve as first chair at hearings, trials, and negotiations. On any given day, you may conduct an examination of a medical expert in a social security disability claim, draft an advanced health care directive for an ailing client, or seek to obtain insurance coverage for a client from an HMO.
The Law-Medicine Center
The Law-Medicine Center—founded in 1953 as the country’s first health law program—has shaped the field for more than seventy years. With unparalleled course offerings, immersive experiential learning, outstanding faculty, and lectures from leading voices across medicine and law, the center prepares you for the challenges and innovations that lie ahead.
Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine
Health Matrix is an academic journal that features scholarship by leading experts and student authors, including a collection of articles emerging from the Law-Medicine Center’s annual health law symposium. You may be selected for the journal through grades and a writing competition. If selected, you’ll serve as an editor, complete substantial research papers, and have the opportunity to have your papers selected for publication in the journal.
Student Health Law Association
The Student Health Law Association promotes professional development by organizing lectures, workshops, symposia, and career-focused programming in health law. The organization also partners with other student groups on service and outreach initiatives and advocates for the interests of students pursuing health law.