A friend of mine went to Tulane law school, and he told me that the university has two different requirements for students who want to practice law in Louisiana and who want to work elsewhere in the USA.
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Louisiana’s civil law (i.e. not criminal matters) is based on continental European legal tradition (coincidentally known as civil law to contrast with the Common Law that is the English legal tradition, upon which the other 49 states and most English-speaking countries are based).
Louisiana was originally a French colony which passed into Spanish control, then back into French before being sold to the United States. Its legal system is specifically based on French law with some Spanish influence. When it reached the United States, it already had a well-functioning legal system, so there wasn’t really a need to set up a new legal system based on how things work elsewhere in the United States.
Jury trials are the most visible aspect of the Common Law to most people. However, various concepts in the law work differently. Most notably, the role of precedent relative to written statute of the law, contract law, property law, and inheritance law. As an American, French inheritance law seems rather weird to me.
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