None of the students in my Trial Advocacy class were alive at the time of the march on Washington. None of them had watched the Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in its entirety. So, Tuesday’s class was an opportunity to not only commemorate the march and the speech but also let them [...]
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONThis coming Tuesday Seattle University will introduce a new course that is designed to familiarize students with practical aspects of practicing law in order to prepare them to start work either in a firm, public employment, or in a solo practice. The intersession course (January 8 -10, 2013) is Essential Lawyering Skills: Persuasive Communication; [...]
Being on the New “Becoming a Lawyer” Wolters Kluwer WebsiteWolters Kluwer (our publisher) just launched a new website for law students and published an article that I wrote about “The Storytelling Lawyer.” The article discusses the importance of being a storyteller in trial and uses the Dr. Conrad Murray trial to illustrate the points. It [...]
Law Students Spend a Day in CourtSeeing is believing and understanding. For the first time, I added to my Seattle University Law School Comprehensive Trial Advocacy course a requirement that the students spend a day watching a trial and write a report on what they observed and learned. The students went to different courts – [...]
Halftime Pep Talk and Trial AdvocacySuper Bowl has come and gone. As have the ads. Much has been said and written about Eastwood’s halftime advertisement for Chrysler. Carl Rove attacked it, claiming that it was a payback to Obama for the bailout. Joe Klein in Time magazine mused over how Rove and the Republicans got [...]
Averting an Attempt to Blunt a Rebuttal ArgumentIs there anything more powerful and gratifying than a good rebuttal closing argument? It’s rightfully called the “hammer.” When you have the rebuttal, you can expect that opposing counsel will attempt to deflect the hammer blows. Here is a transcript of just such an effort:Defense counsel used this [...]
SHOW THE STORY: The Power of Visual Advocacy Trial Guides has just published the new book SHOW THE STORY: The Power of Visual Advocacy by William and Robert Bailey. This is the quintessential trial advocacy guidebook on how to bring the trial story alive in the courtroom through visuals. Show the Story has drawn praise [...]
The Courtroom Culture A successful trial lawyer adapts to the courtroom culture. While protocols vary somewhat from courthouse to courthouse and even courtroom to courtroom in the same courthouse, minimum standards of conduct do exist. In the following article, King County Superior Court Judge John P. Erlick provides concrete advice concerning those standards. His advice [...]
The Value of Video Jennifer Shapiro, pictured here, stands before a jury of her peers – students in her comprehensive trial advocacy class at Seattle University Law School. She delivers her first opening statement in the class. It’s not her first opening because she has competed in mock trials before.As she delivers the opening, a [...]
The article Sharing Stories: Narrative Lawyering in Bench Trials, 16 Clinical Law Review 195 (2009), provides insights into what is and what isn’t effective advocacy in a bench trial. The author of the article is Paul Holland, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University Law School. Besides his duties [...]
