This course is a must-take for students with their eyes set on law school, but make sure you plan your quarter around its' workload. We read/covered dozens of cases, each of which required reading and parsing through many pages of dense legal writing. The midterm and final are very tough, as he asks you to apply lengthy rules/precedents set in each case to analyze three provided fact patterns, each in their own blue book. The midterm and final take up the entire class period (nearly three hours) and I filled all three of my books both times. Even though it was a lot, it was all worth it in the end. It's a lot of work, but the course is so interesting and enriching. This class was one of the few times I felt like I really accomplished something at the end of a quarter. If you can handle the workload, don't be deterred from taking this one-of-a-kind comm class at UCLA!

I really enjoyed this class and would recommend for pre-law students or for comms majors (like myself) trying to knock out both the practicum and law core requirements.

Class is super straight forward ONLY if you pay attention and go to lecture. It is 3 hours long and packed with information, so it gets super draining, but if you zone out for 5 minutes you can lose a big chunk of information.

A $90 course book is required. I think you could go about not buying/reading if you pay close attention to lecture, but I think doing the readings on top of that is what truly pushed me get an A.

Grade scale is 40% midterm, 50% final, and 10% a short presentation that is P/NP (and you only get NP if you don't do it). He tells you exactly what to look and write in the exams, but they are still super intense.

Professor Kassabian is super educated and a great lecturer, but your grade truly depends on the TA as they will be the one doing all the grading and answering questions. However, if you email the professor, he is very good with responding in a timely manner.

I don't think that these reviews do this professor justice - honestly, I enjoyed the course and while it was challenging, it was totally reasonable. If you are at all interested in law school, you should ABSOLUTELY take this class. It is structured exactly like a law school class - you read Supreme Court cases, discuss them in class, learn about the IRAC method, then apply what you've learned to hypothetical situations during the exam. As long as you stay on top of the readings, attend lecture and discussion while taking good notes, you should be able to get an A. In the first exam you get to see exactly what the professor is looking for so that by the time you take the final, you know just what is expected of you. He gave a generous curve on the midterm and told students that if they had a significant increase from their midterm to their final, he may adjust their grade to better reflect their growth in understanding. He's nice and a clear lecturer.

This is a really interesting comm upper div if you are interested in being pre-law or just learning more about law / the First Amendment. The only assignments are outside of class readings, but you also learn everything you need to know in lecture and it is re-emphasized in discussion (so go!). If you take advantages of the resources like practice HYPOs you will be fully prepared for the exams (midterm and final are 2/3 grades). There is also a speech that is pass/no pass and if you put in decent effort you will pass it. The teacher and TA (I had Ethan Lai) really want you to succeed so take advantage of them and this is a super interesting class!

I dropped the classes after buying the course reader...
I am selling it. If you are interested, let me know. ( ********** )

This was one of my first classes at UCLA as a transfer student and the most difficult class I've taken here. Like others have said do not believe the grade distribution this is a difficult class especially if you have no interest in Law or being a lawyer. I found the material in this class to be interesting and think its a great class to take in prep for law school, however, the professor is a very boring monotone speaker and is not always clear on explanations and expectations from the class. Additionally, he really does not have office hours so you will be relying heavily on the TA for explanations so hopefully, your TA is good.

Professor Kassabian is a full-time lawyer. He did not have any real office hours. I got a D on the midterm and final but was not really told why I got points off of certain questions. Ended up with an NP even though my friends had similar answers to mine and ended up with A's and B's. The class is out of date and the amount of reading required is comparable to comm 10. Do not take this class if you have heavy readings for other classes or do not have an interest in Law.

If you go to all of his lectures, you will get an A.
Selling course reader
Text **********

This class was a lot of work, with many cases to cover every class period. It requires diligent work and studying. The tests are not difficult if you study properly. The hardest part for me was learning how to take the test, the professor has specific guidelines. The information learned is really valuable, it just takes a lot of time. The professor was kind of boring, had no excitement in his voice, and kind of felt condescending when you asked a question. Would recommend taking the class in a quarter where the other classes are you are taking aren't as hard.

Soooo I took this class to fulfill a comm requirement and it was the worst class I've ever taken at UCLA. Not the worst grade I got, but it's definitely down there. Professor Kassabian was kind of boring and I guess that's also why I never really went to class. To be fair, I only started studying last minute and wanted to pull my hair out because exams were tough and I wasn't interested in the subject very much. Readings were super dense and I just never bothered until a week before exams. Luckily my friend was a sweetheart and shared her notes with me and we studied together which really helped. For midterms i got around a D (lol) but somehow ended with an overall B grade so don't give up if you got a bad grade for the midterm! The final could save u if u did well in that. Overall, yeah, worst class at UCLA and glad that it's over. Should've probably did the readings early and went to class so don't be like me! One thing I learned from this class: I never want to be a lawyer