A Complete Legal Education—Yet So Much More

Your legal education at Catholic University’s law school offers precisely the right balance, combining vital skills that every lawyer must possess with an exhilarating degree of self-directed study. At every turn, Catholic Law’s approach to legal education can be summarized with three words: Practical, Focused, and Connected, also referred to as the Catholic Law Advantage. This combined with a strong sense of service and being located in the nation’s capital make Catholic Law a legal education experience that will allow you to grow both professionally and as an individual.

Our innovative first-year curriculum consists of eight required courses that emphasize the doctrinal basics, giving students a solid foundation in substantive areas of the law. Notably, two of our first-year courses, Civil Procedure and Contracts, include new practicum components. In Civil Procedure, students are asked to draft motions, pleadings, or other litigation documents to integrate learning experience with legal doctrine. In Contracts, students are asked to draft or negotiate contracts or engage in other skill exercises that emphasize statutory construction.

In the upper-level curriculum, students enjoy many options for designing a coursework plan in accordance with their interests and career goals. For example, students may tailor their education within six practice-area concentrations, four certificates, or choose among course clusters that group classes by related subject matter.

For those interested in specializing at a very high level of legal study, the law school offers four certificate-issuing programs in law and technology, securities law, law and public policy, and comparative and international law. These institutes offer certification of expertise that is highly valued by future employers in these dynamic areas of law.

Our recent curricular reforms also include transition-to-practice courses that afford students the opportunity to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real-world settings in an actual law practice or complex simulated practice. This mix of tradition and innovation in legal study adds up to some of the best-prepared and most-coveted law school graduates in the nation.

There is no “you’re on your own” at the Columbus School of Law. Collegial and supportive classmates, caring and committed faculty and alumni, and a city that offers unparalleled opportunities to make vital professional contacts combine to form a network that every law student can connect with.