Chicago-Kent offers some of the most rigorous and comprehensive skills training in the nation. In addition to learning to think and write like lawyers, Chicago-Kent students learn to work as lawyers, particularly in the law school's in-house, fee-generating clinics, via externships, and through intensive, litigation-oriented programs focusing on trial and appellate practice.

In clinics run by the Law Offices of Chicago-Kent, students work with clinical professors who are attorneys of record for cases involving a wide variety of matters ranging from the death penalty to employment discrimination issues, from racketeering offenses to complex civil litigation. Students may also seek externships in the federal judiciary, government agencies, corporate legal departments, and private law firms.

Students become skilled practitioners through trial advocacy course work and trial team competitions under the supervision of accomplished litigators and judges; through moot court tournaments that refine skills in oral advocacy and brief writing and require consummate knowledge of appellate procedure; and through Chicago-Kent's practice-oriented Program in Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution.