Southern University Law Center

Juris Doctor Degree

SULC’s Juris Doctor (JD) program offers professional training in the areas of civil (specific to Louisiana) and common law. The program aims to prepare its graduates with the skills and knowledge to be highly effective, competent, and ethical professionals who possess a deep sense of community.

Though the program of study emphasizes the substantive and procedural law of Louisiana, with its French and Spanish origins (civil law), Anglo-American law (common law) is also well integrated into the curriculum.

The civil law system of Louisiana offers law students a unique educational opportunity. The program of instruction examines the historical background of the civil law system and its development in the United States. In addition, fundamental differences in the method, approach, and the results reached between the civil and common law systems is analyzed.

Students are also trained in the art of advocacy, legal research, legal theory and social purposes of legal principles. Techniques to strengthen the students’ abilities in legal reasoning are an integral part of the educational objectives of the Law Center.

As equally important to the study of the law, students are instructed in the ethics of the legal profession with emphasis on the professional responsibility of the lawyer to society.