CDTA

I Missed A Few Classes, Now What?

I Missed A Few Classes, Now What?

If you have missed a few classes, the California Desert Trial Academy (CDTA) has you covered. Classroom time is precious and irreplaceable if missed. After all, a law student’s tuition primarily pays for classroom instruction. Through the CDTA Student Portal, students have access to both live and recorded classes. Available 24 hours a day, seven (7) days a week, the CDTA Student Portal provides access to Online Class Archives. These valuable online resources are available to anyone with a computer less than five years old. Utilizing the state-of-the-art Zoom Video Conferencing application, the CDTA Student Portal gives students a way to stream...

Continue reading

State Bar Lowers Passing Score Necessary For Bar Exam

State Bar Lowers Passing Score Necessary For Bar Exam

On August 10, the California Supreme Court released an order that detailed final arrangements to permanently lower the passing score for the California Bar Exam, which will now be administered online in October 2020. In a letter sent to the State Bar of California's Board of Trustees. the court stated that it would not apply the lower passing score retroactively to past test-takers. Three other states: North Carolina, Oregon, and Washington, have lowered Bar Exam passing scores during the coronavirus pandemic. However, the changes to the passing score in these states are temporary and only apply to future examinees. “With one exception, the court is unaware of...

Continue reading

The September, Um, October Bar Exam Approaches – Don’t Fear (Bar Exam Moved To October)

The September, Um, October Bar Exam Approaches – Don’t Fear (Bar Exam Moved To October)

The California Supreme Court first announced preliminary plans for administering the October Bar Exam online in a July 16 letter to the State Bar Board of Trustees. These plans have been confirmed and finalized with the next California Bar Exam scheduled for October 5–6, 2020. Under the direction of the California Supreme Court, the exam will be administered primarily online. The California First-Year Law Students' Exam, also known as the Baby Bar, has been rescheduled to November 17, 2020. In July, California Supreme Court justices held a videoconference with California law school deans, then held a three-hour virtual hearing to receive input from law school graduates registered...

Continue reading

How To Write A Contract – The Essentials

How To Write A Contract – The Essentials

A 1L’s first contracts class is often an intimidating experience, if not just because the 1L saw “The Paper Chase” a few weeks or months before starting law school. Once we get over the initial realization that our Contracts professor is not as heavy-handed as Professor Kingsfield but just as competent, we wrestle with what a contract is and what a contract is not. At some point, we wonder how these documents, often voluminous with endless provisions of legalese, even get drafted in the first place by mere humans. To be candid, many lawyers never write a contract technically from scratch...

Continue reading

Holding A Job As A Law Student

Holding A Job As A Law Student

Law school, like any form of undergraduate. graduate, or postgraduate education, is expensive, especially since a law student also loses the income that he or she would have gained from working. Some students are lucky enough to receive some form of financial aid, but not all are so fortunate. For a good part of the last century, the notion of working and attending law school was foreign to most students who believed that there was no time to work and study the law. In 2020, times have changed, and many students need to work as a means of paying their tuition...

Continue reading

Location And Legal Office-Space Options: Conventional Space

Location And Legal Office-Space Options: Conventional Space

Location, location, location! Location is everything when it comes to real estate. Location is everything especially when it comes to commercial real estate, and this includes law offices. Lawyers have many options when becoming sole practitioners and opening a new office. Each space and location provide amenities and conveniences both with associated advantages and disadvantages. Lawyers starting a new practice must be sure to examine the written lease for each space option and understand clearly what they are receiving and what they are not receiving. It is always a good idea for new practitioners to compare various leases to ensure they...

Continue reading

Attorneys, Advocates, And The CDTA Vision

Attorneys, Advocates, And The CDTA Vision

From the time the California Desert Trial Academy (CDTA) accepted its first class of students in 2012, it provided them with a unique, innovative, genuinely modern focus on legal education. While this emphasis implements the same comprehensive learning curriculum as traditional law schools, it contemplates and remedies the common shortcomings of law school graduates. At CDTA, we educate students to be lawyers, but we also train and develop them to be exceptional trial advocates. The Attorney Upon leaving law school with a JD, ideally, a graduate should understand the substantive law and be in the position to start her own practice or assume the role...

Continue reading

Why The CDTA Embraces Online Technology

Why The CDTA Embraces Online Technology

Even before the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, the California Desert Trial Academy (CDTA), unlike the majority of law schools and educational institutions, embraced and utilized the use of online technology as an important and essential tool for teaching students, not just how to be exceptional attorneys, but exceptional attorney-advocates. Various technologies and applications for use in the instruction of law have become available in the last two decades. The California Desert Trial Academy has taken advantage of many of these tools to assist its students for the last eight years. Always seeking new ways to enrich the law school experience, the CDTA stays...

Continue reading

Law School Myths And Reality: Law School is Nothing But Reading

Law School Myths And Reality: Law School is Nothing But Reading

There are many myths perpetuated by law school, whether from the public’s general perception of lawyers or the way that law school is portrayed in television shows and movies. Of course, the latter is limited since there are not that many true portrayals of law school in tv and film since perhaps law school as a setting and subject is not the most compelling. Nevertheless, those who have never attended law school tend to accept and believe the prevailing myths, although the reality is quite different. The image of a typical law student tends to be shrouded in the image of someone who...

Continue reading

Identifying Your Client Base

Identifying Your Client Base

Not every lawyer can be all things to all people. An important component of an attorney’s success is not necessarily having as many clients as possible but finding and attracting the right clients. This not so simple task begins with a lawyer identifying the ideal client base for the firm. Is it even possible that a lawyer has an “ideal client” base? To start, some evaluation should be undertaken to determine this. Ask the following questions: What makes someone part of this client base? What does your ideal client do for a living? Where are potential clients located? How do they...

Continue reading
Font Resize