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Intensive Trial Practice Programs provide practical training

Intensive Trial Practice Programs provide practical training

The School of Law’s three intensive trial practice courses that provide focused litigation skills training to JD and LLM students kicked off at Loyola on Saturday, January 7. The intensive trial practice courses include Trial Practice I Intensive, Child Law Trial Practice, and Advanced Trial Practice, are offered annually at the Corboy Law Center the second week in January and expose students to litigation principles in a learn-by-doing environment taught by prominent attorneys and judges from Chicago and around the country.  With a student-faculty ratio as low as 4 to 1 and never greater than 8 to 1, the courses ensure that each student receives personalized attention and constructive feedback.

Students develop persuasive communication and advocacy skills by performing simulation exercises that are necessary to try a case before a jury and the bench. The skills are transferrable to appellate advocacy, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution venues and professional presentation settings.  Faculty guide and coach students through the process of case analysis, motion practice, jury selection and voir dire, opening statements, direct and cross examinations of witnesses, evidentiary objections and foundations for admissibility of evidence, exhibit usage, and closing arguments.  Final jury trials are conducted with mock juries and professional actors as witnesses at the Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago’s Daley Center, the largest civil court building in the country, and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in the Dirksen Federal Building.  

More than one-third of eligible law students participate in these premier intensive courses that are led each January by Loyola’s distinguished law faculty members Zelda Harris, Bruce Boyer, and Bill Elward.

2017 Intensive Trial Practice Faculty

Trial Practice I Intensive:

Robin Andrews, Senior Attorney, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Hon. Kathleen Burke, Cook County Circuit Court Judge
Hon. Samuel B. Cole, United States Immigration Judge
Debra L. Cruz, Assistant Public Defender with the Office of the Cook County Public Defender
Kathryn Doi, Trial Attorney, Daley Mohan Groble P.C., Chicago, IL
J. Cunyon Gordon, Director, Settlement Assistance Program at Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Honorable Daniel P. Guerin, DuPage County Circuit Court Judge, Presiding Judge of the Felony Division  
Zelda Harris, Professor and Director, Dan K. Webb Center for Advocacy, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
J. Christopher Johnsen, Principal, Johnsen Law, LLC
Hon. Maria Kuriakos Ciesil, Cook County Circuit Court Judge

Diane MacArthur (JD ’82), Senior Litigation Counsel, United States Attorney’s Office, Chicago, IL
David Mann, Professional Performance Specialist
Megan McGrath, Assistant State's Attorney, Torts and Civil Rights Litigation Division, Cook
County State's Attorney's Office
Adrienne Mebane, Former prosecutor for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office , felony supervisor

Hon. Jack Moran, Retired Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County
Anthony Pinelli, Principal, Law Offices of Anthony Pinelli, Chicago, IL
Anita Royal, Faculty, National Institute for Trial Advocacy
Ari Telisman, Litigation Counsel, Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois
Nicholas Sitterly, Principal, Sitterly Law Firm, LLC, Albuquerque, NM
Radiance Ward, Assistant Public Defender, Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender

Child Law Trial Practice:

Hasti Barahmand, Salisbury Clinical Teaching Fellow in Child and Family Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law Child Law Center
Gideon Baum, Assistant State’s Attorney, Office of the Cook County State’s Attorney, Juvenile Justice Bureau
Dennericka Brooks, Senior Attorney, Legal Assistance Foundation
Bruce A. Boyer, Clinical Professor, Director, Civitas Child Law Clinic, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
Joan Colen, Attorney at Law, Chicago, IL
Charles Golbert, Deputy Director, Adult Guardianship Division, Office of Cook County Public Guardian
Richard Hutt, Chief, Child Protection Conflicts Division, Office of the Cook County Public Defender
Djuana O’Connor Oshin, LegalBee, Bloomingdale, IL
Alpa Jayanti Patel, Assistant Deputy Director, Juvenile Division, Office of the Cook County Public Guardian
Stacey Platt, Clinical Professor of Law, Associate Director, Civitas Child Law Clinic, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
Helen Kim Skinner, Adjunct Faculty, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
Kevin M. Sobczyk, Assistant State’s Attorney, Office of the Cook County State’s Attorney, Felony Review Unit
Alison Stankus, Training Coordinator, Office of the Public Guardian, Juvenile Division

Advanced Trial Practice:

William X. Elward, Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, Loyola University Chicago School of Law; Assistant Attorney General, Illinois Attorney General’s Office
Steve Nate, Chief of the Criminal Prosecutions/Trial Assistance Bureau, Illinois Attorney General’s Office
Claire Nicholson, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Trials Assistance Bureau, Illinois Attorney General’s Office