CDTA’s Unique Curriculum
The California Desert Trial Academy is at the forefront of modern legal education. Our unique Juris doctorate program provides a manageable four-year program that allows many older students the opportunity to pursue a law degree. CDTA’s Curriculum is based on a four-year period of legal study designed not only to teach students the substantive law but to train and develop them to be attorneys who are also capable and effective advocates. In addition to typical core requirements, CDTA offers students courses on subjects that will especially aid them in the practice of law in the Coachella Valley and surrounding areas.
20th Century law schools prepare students to be lawyers by utilizing an all-consuming class schedule that squeezes legal education into three years. In contrast, CDTA students may study at their own pace and maintain the important family and work responsibilities they have away from law school.
CDTA’s curriculum presents students with class on one, and only one, subject in each nightly three and one half-hour session. Instead of having four to five classes a day as they would in a three-year program, CDTA students may concentrate on one subject per day. A course’s weekly material is covered entirely and conveniently in one longer concentrated learning session. CDTA students can divide and partition how they study and learn the daily material which, for many students, is an extremely helpful and advantageous way of learning.
CDTA’s unique program requires four years of classes prior to graduation. A fourth year of school allows students to learn the law at a slower, more reasonable and manageable pace. This fourth year also allows students the extra time to develop skills that equip them to be competent advocates immediately upon graduation.
Many law schools are starting to offer four-year programs to accommodate students. Four-year, or what some call part-time, J.D. programs are very convenient for students who must work during the day and can only take classes on the weekends or evenings. Some schools offering highly regarded four-year programs are Georgetown University, George Washington University, Fordham University, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland.
Not every student can devote a great deal of time to attending several hours of class and then reading a hundred pages of case law each day. The California Desert Trial Academy (CDTA) schedules classes and other important curriculum-based activities that consider the paramount responsibilities, such as jobs and families, that many students have.
In consideration of these responsibilities, CDTA offers evening classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at our College of Law in Indio, CA. Thus, anyone with a traditional 9-to-5 work schedule may still attend each scheduled class outside of this normal 40-hour per week window. Because of CDTA’s extensive online resources, every class is archived and available to students 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
CDTA also offers as part of its standard curriculum, courses on Bankruptcy, Immigration Law, Indian Law, and Intellectual Property. Of course, CDTA provides students with instruction on legal writing, drafting contracts, and trial advocacy to help develop them into exceptional attorney-advocates.
Weekends at CDTA offer students an additional opportunity to learn valuable skills that help them prepare for law school exams and the bar exam. CDTA also has weekend programs that teach students other essential skills, values, and historical perspectives.
Discussions with legendary trial attorneys, F. Lee Bailey and Gerry Spence, inspired founders John Patrick Dolan and Irene Garcia Dolan to start the California Desert Trial Academy. A consistent theme of their discussions was how law school graduates failed to possess the courtroom skills necessary for effective legal advocacy. And the rest is history. In 2012, CDTA opened its doors featuring a more practical and modern approach to legal education. An approach that uses a progressive yet comprehensive learning platform to address the traditional deficiencies of law students that exist when they graduate. At CDTA, not only do we train, educate, and develop students to be exceptional attorneys, we also train them to be exceptional trial advocates. Call us today at (760) 342-0900 or find out more online here.