LAWS 8985
Federal Court Clinic · 1 instructor on record · 2 sections
That is the class itself, averaged across everyone who taught it. Who taught it, and how each of them scored, is the board below — that is what a student picking a section is actually choosing between.
Boston College's own “intellectually challenging” question for this class only — students answer it positively about courses that stretched them, so it measures intellectual challenge and NOT grading, workload or quality. Almost every BC class scores high on it, which is why it is shown as a rank rather than a score.
Boston College reports workload for this class only as one of five bands, not as a number of hours, and it does not publish what the bands mean — so this site will not translate it into hours. Higher means more work, which is not the same as worse.
The Federal Court Clinic provides free information, advice, and limited scope legal assistance to pro se (self-represented) litigants in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The Clinic seeks to enhance access to justice and improve the litigation process for pro se litigants who have filed, or intend to file, a civil case in federal court. The Clinic assists litigants who cannot afford an attorney with federal civil cases, including cases involving civil rights, employment discrimination, age discrimination, housing discrimination, labor law, and social security benefits. Students will have the opportunity to interview and counsel clients on a wide-variety of federal civil law. Students will learn to (1) advise litigants about potential federal claims prior to filing suit, (2) interpret and explain federal law and procedure, (3) provide brief legal counseling, (4) review and edit draft pleadings and correspondence with the Court. Students will have the opportunity to meet clients at the federal courthouse in Boston.
| Instructor | Overall | Workload | Challenge | RMP overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeffrey CohenLaw Provisional | 952 records | 100th | 93rd | 1007 ratings · all classes |
There is no ranking to read here: Jeffrey Cohen is the only instructor with evaluation records for LAWS 8985, so the number is a record, not a position. It rests on 2 records, which is thin — read it as provisional. The RateMyProfessors figure is their overall score across everything they teach, not their score in this class.
Also taught by Jeffrey Cohen
6 other classesOther LAWS classes
All of them| Class | Instructors | Course score |
|---|---|---|
| LAWS 2110Critical Perspectives: Law, Context, and Professional Identity | 3080 records | 66 |
| LAWS 8667Legal Practice Externship | 251 records | 91 |
| LAWS 2150Law Practice 1 | 1032 records | 84 |
| LAWS 2155Law Practice II | 1032 records | 83 |
| LAWS 8130Advanced Legal Research | 829 records | 92 |
| LAWS 2190Professional Responsibility | 926 records | 74 |
The line
All 13 items · means across 2 recordsBar length is the rank against every comparable record we hold, not the raw score: BC's questions all have a median around 4.5, so a raw-scale bar would be nearly full on every row and would tell you nothing. Every bar is one ink colour — nothing here is graded green or red. The hatched bars are not ratings at all: a higher number on either describes a different course, not a better one.
Game log
2 sections · newest first| Instructor | Term | Sec | Instr | Course | Work |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeffrey Cohen | Spring 2026 | 01 | 94 | 94 | 100 |
| Jeffrey Cohen | Fall 2025 | 01 | 95 | 95 | 100 |
How to read this boardInstructors are ranked on their record in this class only, never on their average across everything they teach. Scores are out of 100 — Boston College's 1–5 agreement scale, ×20, the way these numbers were printed for years. Workload is BC's own five-band figure, not a number of hours, and is shown as a rank. A dash means the question was not reported, and is never a zero.