Professional skills requirement
Students practice professional skills in numerous regularly offered courses. Trial and pretrial skills are the focus of our innovative litigation curriculum. Students develop oral advocacy and brief-writing skills in the first-year Legal Research and Writing course, and students have opportunities to enhance those skill in the annual Sherman Minton Moot Court Competition, which typically involves more than half of the second-year class. And each year Indiana Law students participate in the international Jessup competition.
Professional skills are not limited to the courtroom, however. Indiana Law offers a full range of courses in other forms and settings of dispute resolution, including negotiation, mediation, and arbitration. The curriculum also offers numerous drafting and advanced legal writing courses — fundamental skills for every practicing lawyer.
Many students also develop professional skills — of all kinds — in clinics and externships.
Students in our JD degree program must complete one upper-level course with substantial instruction in a professional skill. These courses fulfill the requirement:
- B720 Advanced Trial Practice
- B595 Advanced Environmental Law & Practice
- B734 Advocacy
- B642 Appellate Advocacy
- B632 Business Planning
- B688 Community Legal Clinic
- B558 Conservation Law Clinic
- B545 Criminal Law Externship
- B553 Disability Law Clinic
- B563 Domestic Relations Mediation
- B561 Entrepreneurship Law Clinic
- B740 Estate Planning
- B691 Family and Children Mediation Clinic
- B710 Independent Clinical Project
- B788 Labor and Employment Arbitration
- B593 Lawyering in the Public Interest
- B771 Mediation
- B620 Negotiations
- B559 Patent Prosecution
- B564 Pretrial Litigation
- B679 Student Legal Services Externship
- B584 Trial Competition Team
- B722 Trial Advocacy