LAW-3208: Medicine for Lawyers

Multiple areas of law, including personal injury, criminal law, workers’ compensation, employment discrimination, disability, medical malpractice, family law, and conservatorships, require consideration of medical issues impacting the parties and the need for expert medical evidence. Yet, lawyers often enter the practice of law with little or no medical training, no understanding of how the human body responds to injury or disease, no understanding of how to determine appropriate standards of care, and no practical advice for how to develop or challenge expert medical evidence in the context of legal proceedings. This course is designed to provide law students with a practical understanding of the physiology of the human body, the impact of injury or disease on the human body, how medical providers assess, diagnose, and treat patients pursuant to appropriate standards of care, and practical considerations for how to develop and/or challenge effective expert medical evidence in the context of legal proceedings. The students will examine a broad array of medico-legal issues and discuss how various courts have addressed such issues in different contexts.