Colorado Law's Master of Studies in Law (MSL) degree is a one-year, 28-credit, no-LSAT-required program that enables students who hold at least an undergraduate degree to obtain legal training short of a full Juris Doctor (JD). Increasingly, emerging job markets have openings that require some legal knowledge and employers are assigning a number of legal tasks traditionally performed by lawyers to non-lawyers. Colorado Law's MSL will prepare students to obtain and excel in those positions.

Ethics and Compliance Curriculum

The ethics and compliance track trains students to become compliance and ethics officers at large corporations, as well as at nonprofit entities, such as colleges, universities, and hospitals. These organizations are subject to an increasing number of legal requirements and need trained professionals to lead effective in-house programs to ensure compliance with statutes and regulations.  

This track prepares students to develop, improve, and manage ethics and compliance programs and help organizations obey the law, reduce the risk of fraud, other law-breaking, and misconduct, and mitigate their firms' legal liability and reputation risk. Students have the opportunity to focus on specific fields of law, such as privacy/cybersecurity, healthcare and financial services. 

 

 

Requirements

Colorado Law’s Master of Studies in Law (MSL) in Human Rights is an advanced degree program that offers training in international human rights law and policy for professionals from a wide variety of academic backgrounds.The MSL in ethics and compliance is designed to prepare prospective ethics and compliance officers in privacy/cybersecurity, health care and financial services.

All MSL students will take courses designed specifically for MSL students—one that introduces them to the American legal system, and one that introduces them to legal research, writing and analysis. In addition to those introductory courses, MSL students will take required and elective courses, alongside JD students, relevant to their specialty track. 

Learning Outcomes

Colorado Law’s mission is to be an outstanding public law school that provides students with a state-of-the-art legal education and prepares them to serve wisely and with professionalism; advances the development of knowledge through scholarship, testing of new ideas, and challenges to the status quo; and serves as a vehicle and catalyst for meaningful public service, all of which deliver high value to our students and have positive impacts—both locally and globally—on the legal profession and society. 

As this mission statement makes clear, we believe that excellence in legal education requires a commitment to a plurality of purposes. To achieve some of those purposes, Colorado Law has identified the following learning outcomes for its students:

  • Knowledge and understanding of legal theory and doctrine.
  • Related substantive knowledge, including societal context.
  • Legal analysis.
  • Legal research skills.
  • Oral and written communication.
  • Professional and ethical responsibilities to clients and the legal system.
  • Other professional skills.