Georgetown Law Juris Doctor — Program Approach

A civil trial attorney with decades of legal experience, Karl Ashanti served as senior counsel with New York’s Office of the Corporation Counsel. Karl Ashanti earned his juris doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center.
The Georgetown Law juris doctor program offers a three-year course of study for a law degree, with most courses held during typical business hours. The program requires 85 total credits, with 30 taken in the first year of the program. Students take one of two first-year sets of courses, one of which parallels typical law school coursework while the other offers an integrated approach to law and legal thinking. The first year also includes simulations that allow the practice of real-world legal skills.
In the integrative approach, students learn about the ways in which specific aspects of the legal field relate to other areas of society. Broad swaths of the field are covered with an eye toward their interrelations through courses such as Democracy and Coercion and Bargain, Exchange, and Liability. Georgetown’s proximity to the nation’s capital provides opportunities for many object lessons in how the practice of law affects society, and these courses support this learning process.
