A comprehensive exam establishes the grade with extra credit given for outstanding classroom participation. A course practice manual is graded pass-fail. The litigation of professional malpractice, both for plaintiffs and defendants, is the focus in a seminar format.
Major emphasis is on litigating legal and medical malpractice claims.
Begin ning with the petition and answer, we go through the discovery process, jury selection, preparing and deposing expert witnesses, mock and shadow juries, settlements, alternative dispute resolution, and closing arguments. Depending on the availability of speakers and the scheduling of CLE programs, we begin with plaintiff's case in legal or medical malpractice, then go to the defense side. The course is valuable for those who want to be trial law yers, regardless of whether they intend to litigate profes sional malpractice claims. Recent Missouri Kansas legal malpractice cases are considered in depth with presentations by the plaintiff's defendant's lawyers who litigated some of the cases. Civil procedure, evidence, legal ethics, professional malpractice avoid ance and trial practice are Bar and Multistate subjects addressed in this course.