At Stetson Law Immersive Courses Dive Deep
Law courses don’t usually require a bottle of bug spray – let alone a tent. But for students who enroll in Cases and Places, a new course offered at Stetson Law, they are necessary.
One of the numerous outside-the-box courses the College offers, Cases and Places introduces students to Florida’s great outdoors, and the political, economic, and legal factors that influence how it functions today and the people leading on-the-ground efforts to protect it. In its inaugural offering, the course featured a four-day trip through the Greater Everglades, a large, biodiverse region, including its most remote environs – hence the tents.
“Getting our students out of the classroom and into the ecosystem is a powerful way to illuminate the legal documents and processes that shape our state,” said Law Professor Jaclyn Lopez, who teaches the course.
A new perspective on environmental law
Lifelong Floridian and Stetson Law student Warren Wood said the in-depth course was an enlightening experience even for someone who grew up in the Sunshine State.
“It is one thing to read about the cases that shaped our state,” he said. “But it brought things into a different perspective to go out and see the places that have been affected by the cases we studied, and meet the people who were not only involved in the past cases, but continue to fight to keep our state beautiful and clean for generations to come.”
The experience reflects the College of Law’s culture of fostering preparedness among its students through encouraging meaningful experiences and connections within the legal profession well before graduation. Travel courses offer many opportunities to do so, but some classroom-based syllabi feature immersive sessions with successful practitioners who share insights and offer practical lessons.
Cases & Places 2026 details
The second edition of the course invites students to explore Florida’s springs, live the cases, and meet the lawyers, scientists, and advocates who help shaped policy around Florida’s abundant springs.
The three-credit course involves camping trip with driving, hiking, and swimming and will be taught by Professors Lopez and Royal Gardner. It satisfies the upper-level writing requirement.
Students interested in applying can send a resume and letter of interest to Professor Lopez, [email protected], by October 24th.
A “life-changing” civil rights exploration
Every summer, Stetson’s Civil Rights Law Travel Course invites students to visit the historic sites and history-makers who shaped the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The course launched in 2005 by then-Professor Robert Bickel and has continued with support from Wil Florin ’82 and Tommy Roebig ’86.
The 2,000-mile journey takes them to Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee to meet with still-living veterans of the Civil Rights Movement and explore places like the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
Law Professor Judith Scully, who now teaches the course, said participating students describe the experience as life changing.
“As a professor who has been privileged to help lead this civil rights learning journey, I can say that my life has also been profoundly impacted and each year my commitment to teaching and learning in this program is exponentially multiplied,” Scully said.
La’Tonya Lynn ’25 said the course gave her a “renewed call to action to make an impact” when she experienced it in 2022.
“If I am resilient and persevere, I too can be victorious, even when faced with adversity,” she said.
Immersive learning in the classroom
While not all classes involve venturing out into the field, professors find unique ways to build real-world insights into their syllabi.
Through his compressed weekend course “Financial Advocacy,” Professor and Center for Elder Justice Director Mark Bauer covers legal financial literacy along with some cultural competence to help students understand the real-world questions they are going to face from clients and loved ones alike.
In his upper-level business course titled “Documents of the Deal,” Professor Joseph Morrissey brings accomplished practitioners, including alumni like Brittany Maxey-Fisher and Keven and Jenay Iurato, to the classroom for deep dives on a variety of corporate transaction types and the forms associated with them. From formation transactions to mergers and acquisitions and even bankruptcy, the course is meant to prepare students to launch a business law practice.
“This course is a tremendous opportunity for law students to meet, learn from, and network with business law experts across a range of business fields,” Morrissey said. “It’s been awesome and students love it.”
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Media contact: Kate Bradshaw
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