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A group of students in professional attire pose outdoors beneath a pergola lined with columns and greenery, smiling for a group photo.

Legal Reasoning and Argumentation

Become a Summer Trojan and earn college credit.

Program Overview

This pre-law summer program allows high school students to dissect complex case law, engage in effective oral advocacy and investigate how courts resolve legal issues when controlling precedents conflict with each other.

Students will attend federal appellate court proceedings and see the skills they learn in class applied (and misapplied) in real life.

At the end of the course, students will have a portfolio of documents demonstrating their experience with legal analysis and writing, including experience writing a predictive legal memorandum.

Students dressed in business attire sit in a courtroom with wooden walls and blue chairs, listening attentively.

Key Information

Topics of Study

Case analysis
Legal reasoning
Legal writing
Oral advocacy
Court systems and the development of law
Law school admissions

Learning Highlights

Learn the hierarchy of U.S. law
Understand the difference between questions of law and questions of fact in American legal proceedings
Differentiate between binding holdings and dicta within judicial opinions
Use case law to predict the outcomes of future cases
Learn the basics of legal argumentation and writing
Develop effective and persuasive oral advocacy techniques

Requirements

Students must bring their own laptops
On the course’s two court visit days, students must follow a business professional dress code, including closed-toe shoes. The following are not permitted: jeans, tank tops, extreme low-rise pants, low-cut tops, bare back or bare midriff, and flip-flops. Students will not be permitted to attend court visits if they do not follow the dress code.

Week	Focus	Key Topics	Assignments and Activities
1	Questions of Fact Versus Questions of Law	Hierarchy of U.S. law; logistics of trial; how to interpret a statute; how to brief a case	In-class mock trial.
2	Appellate Advocacy	Logistics of appeals; substantive due process	Visit the Central District of California Courthouse and meet a federal trial judge.
3	Oral Advocacy and the Legal Memo	How to persuade an appellate panel; how to write an objective predictive legal memorandum	Engage in appellate-style oral advocacy. Write a predictive legal memorandum.
4	Moot Court	How to succeed in moot court; how to prepare for pre-law undergraduate studies	Engage with 2026 American Moot Court Association prompt and argue the case in the Ninth Circuit Courthouse in Pasadena. Meet a Ninth Circuit judge.

[This course] was very useful for me to understand how law and the legal system in America works as well as what I want to study in the future.

— USC Summer Programs student participant