Labor and Employment Law
Courses
Faculty
Activities, Externships, & Internships
From a field once governed solely by the employment-at-will rule that employees have almost no rights against termination or any form of workplace treatment, labor and employment law has grown into one of the most substantial fields of federal litigation and regulation. Unionization and wage laws of the 1930s were followed by the race, sex, and age discrimination laws of the 1960s. The 1990s and 2000s have seen expansion of those laws into new areas such as disability accommodation, family leave, genetic discrimination, and corporate whistleblowing. Today, labor and employment law cases 鈥渃onstitute an increasing fraction of the federal civil docket, now reigning as the largest single category of cases.鈥 Kevin M. Clermont & Stewart J. Schwab, How Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare in Federal Court, 1 J. Empirical Leg. Stud. 429, 429 (2004). Employment discrimination claims alone constitute nearly 10 percent of all federal litigation.
Colorado Law students enjoy a broad range of offerings in labor and employment law. The school offers 鈥渢he big three鈥 courses: Employment Law, Employment Discrimination, and Labor Law 鈥 annually. None is a prerequisite to any other, and none has a waitlist thanks to Colorado Law鈥檚 low student to faculty ratio.
Colorado Law鈥檚 range of more specialized labor/employment electives includes Employment Benefits, Workers鈥 Compensation, Race and the Law, Class and Law, and others. Colorado Law also offers a wide range of courses in litigation and alternative dispute resolution (the setting in which most employment disputes are resolved) that include not only advanced theoretical study, but also practical skills training in our experiential learning curriculum that help Colorado Law graduates hit the ground running as labor and employment lawyers.
Courses
鈥 in Labor & Employment Law:
- Workers鈥 Compensation
- in Related Fields:
- in Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution:
Faculty
Activities, Externships, and Internships
Student Organizations:
- Society for Work, Employment, & Labor Law at CU (SWELL CU)
- National Lawyers鈥 Guild
- Public Interest Students Association (PISA)
- Legal Alternative Dispute Resolution Club (LADR)
Externships and Internships:
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
- National Labor Relations Board
- Colorado Dept. of Labor and Employment/ Industrial Claim Appeals Office
- Various City Attorney鈥檚 Offices (e.g., Arvada, Boulder, Denver, Greeley, Jackson Hole)
- Children鈥檚 Hospital of Colorado
- Denver Museum of Nature and Sciences
- Office of the University Counsel, University of Colorado
- Various labor & employment law firms employing Colorado Law students in paid work, both part-time during the school year and full-time during summers.
