New Minor in Law Gives Undergraduate Students Broader Access to Legal Studies
In the fall of 2025, enrollment opens for the new Minor in Law program at the University of Arizona, a collaboration between the James E. Rogers College of Law and the School of Government & Public Policy (SGPP). The Minor in Law is housed within the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences.
The new minor joins the first-of-its-kind BA in Law to provide additional options for students to pursue legal studies. According to Keith Swisher, faculty director of the BA in Law and Master of Legal Studies Programs, the Minor in Law is expected to attract students interested in eventually pursuing a JD, as well as students interested in non-attorney careers like court service, compliance, and law enforcement.
The Minor in Law replaces the prelaw thematic minor, which included courses with law-adjacent subject matter. The new minor will focus more on exposing students to legal studies offerings like those provided in the JD program, including legal skills and substantive legal courses. Students currently enrolled in the prelaw minor will be able to complete that minor or join the new Minor in Law.
Exposure to Law Curriculum
Of the 18 units required for the Minor in Law, half must be taught by the college of law. “[Students will be] taking half of their credits from the law school using the same type of teaching strategies and materials that they would get in graduate level law school,” says Swisher. “That’s an excellent opportunity for students interested in going to law school and becoming lawyers, because they’re getting good exposure, first of all, to make sure that they’re on the right path, and then good preparation if they want to continue on that path through law school and to become an attorney.”
Swisher notes that the program builds on the existing structure and support system of the BA in Law, which, when it was first offered in 2014, was the first such program in the United States to treat law as a standalone undergraduate discipline. While other schools have followed suit, he says there are still very few offering a minor of this kind.
“The Minor in Law builds on the strong reputation of the college of law and the university for providing legal education that is not just excellent, but also accessible, a crucial need in Arizona and beyond,” says Arizona Law Interim Dean Jason Kreag.
Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
SGPP Distinguished Professor & Director and Melody S. Robidoux Fund Leadership Chair Alex Braithwaite points to the strong interest in legal studies among undergraduate students, noting that the University of Arizona ranks fourth in the nation in the number of bachelor’s degrees conferred in legal studies. With the BA in Law already highly successful, the collaboration between the college of law and SGPP “helps to meet great student demand with more direct access to legal studies and closely related topics,” he says.
The collaboration among law, government and policy programs at the university brings together disciplines that are “deeply interconnected” and “at their core … all focused on elements of governance,” Braithwaite remarks.
“If the university is to make credible contributions to governance at the local, city, state, federal or global scales, we will have to be engaging all our relevant disciplines and not simply relying on them individually,” Braithwaite says. “At a time when the university is reaffirming its land grant mission, I think our collective expertise in governance is more important than ever before.”