Upcoming Events
St. Valentine’s Domestic Violence Seminar
Prelims, Professionalism, and Ethics Webinar
Date: June 4th, 2025
A half-day online webinar. More details forthcoming.
Membership Benefits
Registration to members-only email listserv
UACDL members get access to a listserv where they can send and receive emails from all other members. Our listserv is an active one, typically involving 5-10 emails per day, with a strong culture of assisting each other. Members post legal questions, share documents, and exchange ideas about criminal law issues. Please see the listserv tab for more details.
Access to UACDL’s brief bank
UACDL keeps a brief bank of over 80 briefs ranging from motions to suppress to bifurcating trials.
Access to past CLE recordings for self-study
Members get free access to select CLE recordings for self-study. Most of these recordings may be purchased for self-study CLE hours.
Defense-focused CLEs and seminars
UACDL hosts multiple seminars throughout the year. These include a full day DUI seminar typically in the spring or early summer, a two-day annual seminar (theme changes yearly) in the fall, and a full day death penalty seminar in the winter, along with other non-standard ones. Only UACDL members may register for these seminars. UACDL also periodically offers free virtual CLEs to its members given by subject-matter experts.
Mission Statement
To foster, maintain, and encourage the integrity, independence, and expertise of the defense lawyer in criminal cases; to achieve justice and dignity for defense lawyers, defendants, and the criminal justice system itself; to protect and insure by rule of law those individual rights guaranteed by the Utah and United States Constitutions, to encourage cooperation among lawyers engaged in the furtherance of such objectives through educational programs and other assistance, and through such cooperation, education, and assistance, to promote justice and the common good; to promote study and research in the criminal justice systems and the related disciplines; to disseminate by lectures, seminars, and publications, the advancement of knowledge of the law as it relates and is ancillary to the field of criminal practice; to promote the proper administration of criminal justice; to foster periodic educational meetings of defense lawyers and to provide a forum for material exchange of information regarding the administration of criminal justice and thereby concern itself with the protection of individual rights and the improvement of criminal law, its practice and procedures; and to draft and recommend legislation related to the criminal law and criminal justice.