Trial and Advocacy Program

Michael Koby
Director of Trial and
Advocacy

Program experience, excellence, and guaranteed opportunities for all law students are the hallmarks of the Trial and Advocacy Program at Washington University School of Law. Experienced, full-time law faculty work with accomplished lawyers and judges to teach our courses. The consistent success of the Trial Team and numerous Appellate Moot Court Teams reflect excellence. And we guarantee students enrollment both in lawyering skills courses, where we teach lawyering skills and professional values through hands-on work with problems and hypothetical cases, and in clinical courses, where students use these skills and values by solving problems for clients and by working on real cases in local, state, and federal courts.

Our program more than measures up to every standard of success for trial and advocacy programs:

• the outstanding quality of teaching and learning.
• the number and variety of our lawyering skills courses, including hands-on clinical courses.
• the high level of student participation in lawyering skills courses and intramural competitions.
• the success of our student trial and moot court teams, which can be measured by how much they develop their skills, by the awards they win year after year at all levels of regional, national, and international competitions, and by the doors their experiences open to employment during summers and after graduation (Washington University law students have a nearly 100% employment rate soon after passing the bar).
• the overall quality of the entire faculty and curriculum at Washington University School of Law, which consistently ranks in the top 25 law schools.

Photo by Mary Butkus

All these features have earned the Trial and Advocacy Program the Emil Gumpert Award for Excellence in Teaching Trial Advocacy from the American College of Trial Lawyers. 

At Washington University School of Law, learning how to be a lawyer is valued as much as learning how to think like a lawyer.