Criminal Law and Procedure

Preparing you to be the ultimate trial lawyer.

Through the Criminal Law and Procedure concentration at Creighton School of Law, you’ll be prepared for a legal career focused on fundamental issues of security, personal liberty and constitutional rights.

Your Experience

After mastering the basics in your criminal law and procedure courses, you’ll expand your substantive knowledge into a variety of areas, including white collar crime, juvenile law, and international and comparative studies. You’ll also develop trial practice skills in many of the elective courses and put them to use by competing on our championship trial and moot court teams and by completing externships with judges, prosecutors and public defenders. As a capstone, you must complete a substantial writing project under the supervision of a faculty member as described below.

Your Courses

You must earn 18 credit hours from the elective courses listed below and maintain a 3.0 GPA within the Criminal Law and Procedure concentration. In addition, you must complete a substantial writing project. The substantial writing project may be taken for 1, 2 or 3 credit hours, must be completed under the supervision of a faculty member and must have a substantial focus on criminal law and procedure. Trial briefs or work completed as part of a trial or appellate team may not be used to satisfy the substantial writing project requirement. Take-home exams also do not qualify as substantial writing projects.

Students may complete the substantial writing project by:

• Enrolling in a Selected Research Topics course for 1, 2 or 3 credit hours and completing a paper that is substantially related to criminal law/procedure under the direct supervision of a faculty member; or
• Writing a paper in an elective course that has a paper component as part of the grade for that course. The paper must have a significant criminal law/procedure focus.

A student who is uncertain about whether a particular topic qualifies for the criminal law/procedure concentration should seek the advice of the concentration advisor before beginning the paper.

Finally, students who are interested in pursuing the criminal law/procedure concentration are strongly encouraged to begin thinking about and preparing for the substantial writing project during their second year of law school.