Soft Skills: Strong Ethics & Professional Conduct are Key

While some critics today think there should be even greater emphasis on hard skills courses in law school, and less attention to the soft, much of what you learn in your soft skills courses at California Desert Trial Academy, College of Law could be invaluable to your success as a trial attorney. There is no doubt that you must master an enormous amount of information about the law. Additionally, soft skills will help you strengthen many aspects of lawyering that are not taught in the classroom that will be critical to your career.

You will take a course in Professional Responsibility in your third year of law school. This course will prepare you for both the California Bar Exam as well as the MPRE exam that you will be required to pass before you can become a lawyer in California.

More importantly, you will learn incredibly important skills that will teach you the often intricate professional rules by which you must conduct yourself as an attorney. Being a lawyer means that you have entered one of the most esteemed professions there are. You will be entrusted with a great deal of responsibility and will be sworn in as an officer of the court. This means that you must understand who you can represent and when. You must know what constitutes a conflict of interest and how to handle that. You will be held to an extremely high standard of honesty and integrity both in and out of the courtroom.

For an attorney, exhibiting excellence in professional conduct means acting as an effective and zealous advocate for clients, having a strong knowledge of the law to achieve the best possible outcome, understanding the role of civility with other attorneys and the Court, and always operating with the highest level of integrity and honesty. As an attorney you must learn to be thorough as an advocate, practicing diligence, good communication, and confidentiality.

Following is a list of the soft skills courses required at CDTA:

• Negotiation skills
• Time management skills
• Writing skills
• Enterprise management skills
• Presentation skills
• Research skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Core values review
• Creative thinking skills
• Professionalism
• Appearance and grooming skills
• Ethics and professional conduct

Are you interested in becoming a trial attorney? Our mission at CDTA College of Law is to educate, train, and develop extraordinary legal advocates. Your legal education will be comprised of bar-tested academic subjects, skills training, and values reinforcement. Upon completion of your 4-year course of study you will be fully qualified to take and pass the California Bar examination. Call us today at (760) 342-0900 or find out more online here.