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Contracts is a semester-long, first-year course at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. The course meets twice weekly for 100 minutes per session.
A contract is an exchange relationship. The typical pattern is that one person (or company) sells goods or services to another person (or company) for money. For the most part, Contracts students examine what happens after something goes wrong with this transaction.
Contracts is a required course because the concepts and methods are fundamental to being able to approach law as a lawyer. In this respect, the course is like an introductory course in a foreign language. If you can't talk contracts, you can't talk like a lawyer.
The course emphasizes the empirical and sociological realities of both business and the system of civil justice. In order to explain and defend the legal systems, students must learn what actually happens in the legal system.
In addition to focusing upon the empirical realities of business, litigation, and life, the course also considers some of the theories that explain and/or justify the rules that are supposed to guide contract law and litigation. Consideration of the these rules is divided into topics, including damages. Contracts considers the common law of contracts and the Uniform Commercial Code--especially Article 2. This course prepares students to consider the law of Contracts in all jurisdictions of the United States. This is not a course in Colorado law, although many examples will be drawn from Colorado.
As with other law school courses and with practicing law, being organized and thinking systematically is the key to doing well in Contracts. Professor Russell believes that fear and intimidation are enemies of learning and rejects the 19th-century teaching techniques of those think otherwise. He also believes that PowerPoint is an enemy of learning.
This course and its students are part of the House of Russell. Professor Tom Russell also teaches Torts, American Legal History, Advanced Torts, and from time-to-time a course about criminal justice.
Professor Russell holds J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University and has taught at Stanford University, the University of California--Berkeley, University of California Hastings College of Law, and The University of Texas, where he was Professor of Law and History. He is admitted to practice law in Colorado and California.