Juris Doctorate (JD) in St. Louis, MO United States | Washington University in St. Louis

A foundation for creative legal practice.

The JD program is a three-year professional degree that begins with essential coursework in legal subjects. In your second and third years, you’ll design your own path through specialized courses and hands-on experiential learning.

Combine expertise across disciplines.

Expand your expertise and career opportunities by combining your JD with one of our nine specialized graduate degrees. From business to public health, social work to technology law, these programs let you earn two valuable credentials in less time than pursuing them separately.

following graduation requirements for the JD degree:

• First-year courses
• One ethics course
• Upper-level research and writing requirement (seminar)
• Six units of experiential credits in designated courses
• At least five class hours of instruction related to bias, cross-cultural competency and racism (students can satisfy this requirement by completing up to three BCCCR courses).***
• Six semesters of full-time residency
• At least 86 credit hours (67 in LCUs)*
• Cumulative grade point average of at least 3.00**

The J.D. degree may be completed no earlier than 24 months and, except in extraordinary circumstances, no later than 84 months after a student has commenced law study at the Law School or a law school from which transfer credit has been accepted.

First-Year Courses

First-year students take three doctrinal courses a semester, plus Legal Practice and Legal Research Methodologies. Each semester, first-year students will have one doctrinal course in a small section of approximately 45 students. Legal Practice and Legal Research Methodologies are also taught in small groups and in workshop-style classes by teachers who provide individualized feedback on each student’s research and writing projects. The Negotiation class runs over Intersession (the week before the Spring Semester starts). It may also be offered as a weekend course immediately before Fall classes begin.

• Civil Procedure (4 credits)
• Constitutional Law I (4 credits)
• Contracts (4 credits)
• Criminal Law (4 credits)
• Property (4 credits)
• Torts (4 credits)
• Legal Practice I: Objective Analysis and Reasoning (2 credits)
• Legal Practice II: Advocacy (2 credits)
• Legal Research Methodologies (1 credit for year; posted to spring semester)
• Negotiation (1 credit)

Upper-Level Courses

Upper-level students fulfill the remaining 56 credit hours by tailoring their studies to fit their individual interests. Students may take a variety of courses to meet the upper-class writing requirement, ethics requirement, and applied lawyering/professional skills experiential units requirements. Faculty members and administrators provide guidance about course selection.