Courses
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Advocacy
Teaches students the basic skills all lawyers use in the representation of clients. Students observe and discuss model demonstrations of client communication, persuasion, and advocacy skills and then practice these skills in a small-group setting. Performance exercises include deposition, direct examination, cross-examination, closing argument, and final trial. Students also write an appellate brief and make an appellate argument. Small group meetings are scheduled on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Large Group meets on Thursdays. -
Advanced Advocacy
Covers all aspects of advocacy involved in jury trials, bench trials, administrative hearings, and arbitration. Students learn by performing videotaped exercises in every class, and are critiqued by experienced lawyers and judges. The course covers case preparation, opening statements, direct examination, cross-examination, exhibits, expert witnesses, jury selection, summation, and advocacy ethics. Cases cover a range of civil and criminal problems. Students prepare written questions, outlines, and a trial brief, and try a complete bench trial or arbitration case and a full-day jury trial. Offered as a full-semester course during the fall and spring semesters and in a concentrated format during summer session. -
Expert Witness Advocacy
This one-week immersion course provides students a unique opportunity to interact with professional scientists and expert witnesses as they develop and improve their advocacy skills. The course is run in conjunction with the Expert Witness Training Academy (EWTA), which provides hands-on training to researchers, professors, graduate students, and other climate scientists from leading universities and advocacy organizations from across the country. Students work directly with EWTA participants in simulated depositions, oral arguments, direct and cross-examinations of expert witnesses, arbitrations, legislative hearings, Daubert hearings, and jury trials.
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Trial Advocacy
Provides training in trial advocacy skills for each stage of trial. Areas covered include: ethics, psychology of persuasion, opening statement, direct examination, exhibits, objections, cross‑examination, and closing argument. The teaching methods will include lecture, demonstration, discussion, simulation, instructor critique, and video critique. The final exam will be a trial.