Curriculum and Requirements

The Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution (LADR) curriculum is designed to provide a comprehensive and balanced professional education that adequately prepares students to practice law, with a focus on litigation and alternative methods of resolving conflict. The innovative curriculum stresses the connection between legal doctrine, skills and values, and the art of lawyering. It aims to produce reflective practitioners who incorporate high standards of competence, ethics, and social responsibility. Day and evening students may apply to the program in the spring of their first year at Chicago-Kent.

To earn the LADR certificate, students must complete 21 credit hours of approved course work, which includes five required lawyering process courses, one required doctrinal course, and one elective doctrinal course.

While we accept most applications in the spring, we will accept applications for the LADR certificate program all year. 

Required Lawyering Process Courses

• Pretrial Litigation for LADR (3 credits)
• In-House Litigation Clinic (3 or 4 credits per semester; a two-semester requirement)
• Judicial Externship (4 credits; may substitute for one semester of the In-House Litigation Clinic)
• Mediation and Other ADR Procedures Clinic (3 or 4 credits)
• Trial Advocacy I (3 credits)

Required Doctrinal Course

• Evidence (3 or 4 credits)

Elective Doctrinal Courses (must take at least one)

• Federal Courts (3 credits)
• Criminal Procedure: The Adjudicative Process (3 credits)
• Criminal Procedure: The Investigative Process (3 credits)
• Civil Procedure II (3 credits)
• Complex Litigation (3 credits)
• Appellate Courts and Procedure (3 credits)

As required of all J.D. students, those enrolled in the LADR Program must also complete course work in basic civil procedure and legal research and writing (Legal Writing 1, 2, and 3, plus a seminar). Other course work falls under the category of theoretical and ethical foundations of law (professional responsibility and ethical dimensions of skills training). Elective courses allow students to go into greater depth in areas of special interest.