Center for Legal Advocacy and Dispute Resolution

The Pacific McGeorge Center for Legal Advocacy and Dispute Resolution was founded in 1973, with the opening of the “Courtroom of the Future,” the first experimental courtroom facility among American law schools. In recognition of pre-eminence in advocacy teaching, the American College of Trial Lawyers awarded Pacific McGeorge the first Gumpert award for excellence in Teaching of Trial Advocacy in 1976. Since that time, the Center has remained in the forefront of advocacy training. In 2003, U.S. News & World Report ranked Pacific McGeorge 11th best in the nation in advocacy teaching and tied for first place among West Coast law schools.

The Center provides curriculum and programs in all aspects of advocacy and dispute resolution, including pre-trial preparation, trial skills, appellate advocacy, alternative dispute resolution, practice clinics and externships, judicial externships, legislative and administrative advocacy, technology in the courtroom and international advocacy. It offers an Advocacy Certificate Program, which provides students with a full complement of advocacy and dispute resolution training and recognition of their specialization in advocacy. By its emphasis on practical offerings (including clinical placements, externships and competition teams) as well as advanced courses in advocacy, the Certificate Program ensures that students have not only theoretical training but real world experience.

The Center also actively supports participation by students in inter-school trial advocacy, moot court and alternative dispute resolution competitions. Pacific McGeorge students regularly place among the top teams at regional and national competitions. Plans are under way for a National Ethics Mock Trial Competition, which will be jointly sponsored by the Center and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, beginning in Spring 2006.

In recent years, the Center and its distinguished faculty have been selected to provide training for international programs and in foreign countries, as well as in the United States. In 2003-2004, the United States Department of State engaged the Center to provide trial-skills and negotiation training to prosecutors and public defenders in Chile as part of Chile’s changeover from a European inquisitorial model of criminal prosecution to one more resembling the Anglo-American adversarial model. Center faculty have participated recently in a variety of other international advocacy training programs, including ones in Italy, Cambodia, Rwanda, Uganda and Kosovo.