Advocacy is integrated throughout all components of the Legal Skills & Professionalism Program.  After learning the basics of persuasive writing and oral advocacy in their second semester, students’ advocacy training becomes more specialized as they complete their upper-division writing requirements.

For instance, students who take the Transactional Drafting class learn to negotiate favorable deal terms and draft transactional documents that suit their clients’ best interests.  In ADR & Writing, students learn to advocate their clients’ positions in dispute resolution processes while critically analyzing cases that could benefit from an ADR option.  In Pretrial Practice & Procedure, students learn to advance their clients’ interests through the discovery process and pretrial hearings, while Trial Advocacy & Writing focuses on the preparation of motions in limine, trial briefs and the presentation of a full trial.  The same application of advocacy skills is applied to increasingly complex legal issues in Advanced Appellate Advocacy.