Spring 2026
Professor(s):
Lonny Hoffman (FACULTY)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Law And Society/ Interdisciplinary
Time: 9:00a-12:00p F Location: 102B
Course Outline: This course rigorously explores the challenges to well-being facing law students and legal professionals and the opportunities available for overcoming those challenges. The class’s animating framing is around mindfulness training. Because mindfulness is such a widely used term, it may have different meanings to you so it’s important for us to clarify the type of mindfulness we’ll be practicing. The most important thing to say now is that our central objective is to guide students to greater awareness of how their minds work and to feel how clearer awareness can be a path to more sustainable well-being.
This is a highly experiential class and it may not be right for some students so it is important that you carefully read the course syllabus, which contains more information about the class.
Course Syllabus: Syllabus draft date as October 8, 2025
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Quota=20.
This three-credit course is limited to twenty students.
Grading:
This course satisfies UHLC’s experiential course requirement. However, if you do not need the experiential credit (because you have taken or plan to earn the required credits in other ways), then this course can be taken on a pass/fail basis and I would strongly encourage you to consider doing so. There are three components to grading in this class:
Class Engagement. Part of your grade will be based on your constructive engagement with this class. Although this is more commonly referred to as class participation, we believe engagement is a better term and the modifier is important. Constructive engagement certainly does not turn on the number of times that a student speaks. Active listening is just as important as speaking and, ultimately, the quality of your engagement with this course is what matters, which is we are allocating 15% of the final grade for this element.
Short Reflective Papers. You will write three short, non-anonymous reflective papers (usually no more than two to four typed, double-spaced pages). Assignments will be noted in the syllabus and you’ll get more detailed guidance so everyone can know what is expected of them and how they’ll be evaluated. The short papers, collectively, are worth 15% of the final grade.
Presentation and Longer Paper. Students will also do a presentation about their field assignment. As discussed below in the syllabus (and we’ll cover this in much more detail in class), the field assignment is near the end of the semester. Students will teach some aspect of what they’ve learned in the course to others and then do a presentation to the entire class on their learning experience from this assignment. The presentation is worth 20% of the final grade. Finally, students will write one longer non-anonymous paper based on the topic that they chose for their field assignment. This paper should be between 8-10 typed, double-spaced pages. It is due by no later than Monday, May 4 at 5:00 pm. As with the short reflective papers and the presentations, we will separately provide more detailed guidance as to the expected content of the long paper and how it will be evaluated. The long paper is worth 50% of the final grade.
Prerequisites:
First Day Assignments: Will be posted on course page before the semester begins.
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: No
Experiential Course Type: simulation
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Conditional Availability (not for required credits)
