CDTA Tag

Soft Skills: Strong Ethics & Professional Conduct are Key

soft skills

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...

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Law School: How Many Hours a Week Should I Be Studying?

studying

How much time will it take to prepare for classes and how much studying should you do for exams in law school? While this question has as many answers as there are law students, there is a formula that many professors advocate using. You will most likely want to plan to study for at least two hours for every hour of class. For example, in your first year, you will study Torts, Contracts and Criminal Law. Each class is 3 ½ hours a week. This means you should plan on studying and preparing for each class about 7 hours per...

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Think You Live Too Far Away from CDTA to Go to Law School? Think Again!

soft skills

At the California Desert Trial Academy, College of Law, our goal is to see you succeed in law school. If you live too far away from our campus in Indio to comfortably drive in three nights a week, you may be eligible to participate in our unique Distance Learning Program. This State Bar approved, hybrid program allows you to attend classes from the comfort of your home by attending remotely through the Zoom platform. You will attend class at the same time as your classmates attending in person by logging into our program on your computer. You will be able to...

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First Year Students: CDTA is Laser Focused on Your Success

Law school begins with a great deal of trepidation for many first year students, and although anxiety levels may run high, this type of intensity often leads to an intense motivation to succeed.  Prior to law school orientation, you will likely be bombarded by well-meaning friends and family members regaling their horror stories of their own cutthroat law school experience. They will direct you to watch films such as The Paper Chase  or One L , depicting first-year law students going to any length to push their fellow classmates “down the curve”.  You will hear about professors hell-bent on seeing...

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The Benefits of Attending CDTA Through Our Distance Learning Platform

learning platform

California Desert Trial Academy, College of Law, has the solution to make your dreams a reality with a distance learning platform. Perhaps you have dreamt of being a lawyer since you were a child, envisioning yourself commanding a courtroom in front of a jury and seeking justice for others as an advocate. You may have put those dreams on hold as the demands of family and career took precedence. At CDTA, you can earn your J.D. in four years, while still maintaining your full-time employment and managing the needs of your family. Our classes are held in the evening, three nights...

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Success in the Legal Field: Do You Have to Be Aggressive?

legal field

As a law student, you probably spend a lot of time imagining what it is going to be like to actually get into your career in the legal field and practice as a trial lawyer; after all, this is the whole point of law school: gaining the skills you need to maneuver in the legal system, and hopefully either work for a firm later that challenges and rewards you handsomely, or strike out on your own, perhaps hanging your shingle in your hometown or a neighboring area. Although quite confident in your identity already, you may wonder if you should alter...

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Battling Burnout During the First Year of Law School

burnout

While there are probably many reasons you want to become an attorney, from helping people to seeing justice served, to using your analytical skills in court and enjoying the excitement of being a trial attorney, you may have more than a little trepidation about attending law school, and may worry about issues that come up later such as burnout. Law school is the next level, and one step up from the undergraduate degree (which may have seemed stressful already). Now, mingling with the cream of the crop in law school, you may worry about how you will measure up—along with many...

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Streamline Studying By Understanding Your True Learning Styles

learning styles

Most of us have different learning styles, with the brain functioning in a very complex manner to memorize and retain important information. It can become easier to understand how to study, though when you begin paying closer attention to how you seem to learn best. Throughout the years, this may be on a trial and error basis, and your learning styles may vary depending on the content or degree, but as you enter your first year of law school at CDTA (looking forward to sizeable amounts of reading assignments and coursework overall), consider some factors: You may be an auditory...

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Preparing to take the California State Bar

State bar

For most students attending law school today, and for those enrolled at California Desert Trial Academy College of Law, taking the California State Bar Exam is the end of a long educational journey, testing would-be lawyers before they head out into the legal world to take on clients and hopefully flourish as well-rounded trial attorneys. The California Bar Exam is the test of all tests, although it certainly is not unheard of for a bright student to fail and have to take it again under what is usually significant stress; in many cases, students who find exciting job opportunities in...

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Setting the Scene: How Comfortable Should Everyone Be During Negotiations?

negotiations

While some negotiations are cut and dry, and everyone is happy in a surprisingly efficient amount of time, those will probably be the bonus rounds in your career—the cherries on top. Other times, negotiations may be long, drawn-out, excruciating—and even heated; and after all, if the parties involved were able to agree easily, they would not need your services, and the other side would not have needed to retain legal counsel either. You may be a natural born debater and usually the one to come out on the winning end of any argument, but successful negotiators usually evolve through experience and...

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