Victory University 2012-2013 Academic Catalog

BU-4193 Business Strategy 3 semester hours
BU-4283 Business Law 3 semester hours
General Elective Requirements
Nine (9) hours must be from upper-level (3000/4000) courses
TOTAL: 120 SEMESTER HOURS
42-44 semester hours
BACHELOR OF ARTS IN PRE-LAW STUDIES
DEGREE AVAILABLE ON CAMPUS AND ONLINE
DEGREE REQUIREMENTS
120 SEMESTER HOURS
The Pre-Law program is an area major designed to afford qualified students a broad-based
liberal arts education integrated with coursework in business, economics, and accounting.
Though mastery of content in such courses will develop students’ appreciation for the complex
interrelationships of society and its institutions, an equally important strategy in this major is to
equip students with the fundamental skills in writing, analysis, and oral communication so
indispensable for effective performance both in law school and in the legal profession. A brief
description of the role these skills assume in legal training will help students focus on the
strategic relationship between the requirements of the major and graduate legal education.
CRITICAL THINKING: The law school experience, from the classroom to the moot courtroom
where students stage mock trial competitions, revolves around the case study method. Law
school texts are “casebook” collections of actual court decisions that require students to
analyze the development of the law in specific subject areas such as contracts, personal injury,
and criminal justice. Students are expected to read and prepare written summaries (called
“briefs”) of the assigned cases in preparation for class discussions, and then prepare (and
continually revise) course outlines for each class. The outlines are a semester-long project
intended to prepare students for final exams. This methodology employed in law school
classes, which consists of reading, discussing, and briefing large numbers of cases; extracting
the legal principles held in those cases; and then organizing those principles into coherent,
detailed course outlines, requires intensive and sustained critical analysis of complex fact
situations. The professors will remind students often that they are “helping you to think like a
lawyer.”
ORAL COMMUNICATION: Actual class time in the majority of law courses unfolds in a rapid-fire
exchange of challenging discussion questions directed by the professor to individual students in
what is known as the Socratic Method. The idea is to simulate the actual atmosphere of the
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