¶ … Criminal Attorney
The road to becoming a criminal attorney begins after high school, because a four-year college degree is a prerequisite for admission to law school. Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to study political science or criminal justice in college in order to get into law school. Post graduate institutions value intellectual diversity, so applicants with engineering degrees or other specialized academic backgrounds sometimes have an advantage over more "typical" student profiles.
Since applicants' undergraduate performance is part of the admissions equation, college students should concentrate on an area that genuinely interests them, because they are more likely to achieve high GPA's that way, as well.(1)
During the third year of college, aspiring law students take the Law School
Achievement Test (LSAT), a standardized test designed to measure a student's aptitude and chances of successfully completing the Juris Doctor program. The LSAT is more ability-oriented than the SAT, and less concerned with substantive knowledge. Nevertheless, there is a degree of specificity and preferred analyses patterns from exam to exam that makes enrollment in an LSAT preparatory course worthwhile, to achieve the highest possible score on the exam.(2)
The Juris Doctor degree is usually a three-year fulltime academic program.
First-year law students all share the same curriculum: Contracts, Torts, Constitutional
Law, Property, Civil Procedure, Legal Method and Legal Writing. The degree of difficulty and academic stress experienced by first-year law students ranges very widely, and is somewhat predictable by relative LSAT scores. The other source of stress for first-year law students is a function of the Socratic System usually employed by professors of first-year classes.(3)
The traditional Socratic method consists of the professor's assigning a lengthy reading assignment from casebooks to be completed for the first class. During his first lecture, the professor passes out a seating chart and once it is filled in, he consults it and selects a student to explain the facts of one of the assigned cases. If the student answers correctly, the professor continues with questions about the issues and the holding or decision of the case. Finally, the professor poses hypothetical factual situations and asks for an analysis according to the legal reasoning in the assigned case. If the student provides an incorrect answer along the way, the professor generally selects another student. Sometimes the professor returns to continue with the first student, other times he focuses on the next until his first incorrect response when he shifts to someone else.(4)
Part of the mandatory law school curriculum includes a legal writing course and participation in a moot court case, both of which are designed to expose students to some of the skills required of practicing attorneys in drafting memoranda and researching issues for litigation briefs. Unless one participates in subsequent moot court competitions or specifically makes an effort to take additional courses on trial advocacy, this is just about all the practical experience law students receive from their formal training.(5)
Law school grades are exclusively functions of a single exam given at the end of each course. Except for the Legal Writing course, there are rarely any writing requirements or any other assignments besides the daily assigned readings in preparation for lectures. The exams themselves are known as "issue spotters," requiring the ability to read a hypothetical fact pattern followed by brief instructions to "analyze all issues presented" or to provide a "memorandum of law" identifying the issues presented by the fact pattern. In answering the questions on a law school final exam, the student is expected to ignore any issues outside the subject matter dealt with in the course and analyze only the relevant issues. This means one always ignores any contractual issues and criminal issues in...
Attorneys of every ilk are consistently and constantly faced with decisions that test their ethical considerations. Corporate attorneys faced with illegal activities, divorce attorneys faced with familial consequences, defense attorneys defending sometimes guilty clients, medical attorneys pursuing lawsuits on trivial matters, and even attorneys who represent politicians and policy makers are all examples of attorneys who, at some point in their illustrious careers, are faced with ethical situations that will
3. Given what you know about the operations of the criminal courts, is it accurate to call the criminal justice process an "open system"? Why? Yes, it is accurate to call the criminal justice process an open system. Criminal defendants have access to counsel, either private counsel or court-appointed counsel if a defendant is indigent, for every crucial part in the criminal justice process. In addition, the public has access to
In addition, victims may make a written victim impact statement and present their statement to the court. Corrections: Identify 2 to 3 correctional facilities in Louisiana. Provide information about the types of facilities they are (maximum or minimum security); the types of designs; whether they are private or public; their population statistics; and their type of crime statistics. The Elayn Hunt Correctional Center is the second largest prison within the state
In the experimental community, the researchers instituted a media campaign to increase seat-belt usage, followed by increased police enforcement of the seat-belt law. It was found that the percentage of drivers using seat belts increased in the experimental community but remained stable or declined slightly in the comparison community (Piquero and Piquero, 2002). An example of the before-and-after design would be the analysis of the impact of the Massachusetts Bartley-Fox
To have an appropriate policy outcome, an investigation is necessary to determine the basis of their relationship. This is necessary since both the attorney and the public will be in a position to justify if he shot his wife unknowingly. On the third website there is a case concerning a murderous ex-cop who faces cases of murder and hopes to get another chance. In such a case, there has to
However, as criminals become more aware of undercover tactics, the covert officer is required to provide more and more proof that he is indeed a criminal- which leads to the officer committing acts that compromise his or her integrity for the sake of maintaining cover. By understanding the often conflicting nature of these goals, deception and integrity, we can see how an undercover officer can become confused, lost, and
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