Advocacy Teaching Blog Passes Milestone

Advocacy Teaching Blog Passes Milestone

This past week, The Advocacy Teaching Blog passed an important milestone: 20,000 page views on the Internet. This figure does not take into account the articles read by our many email subscribers, who automatically receive email copies of every blog posting. While the blog's total page views pale in comparison to more well-established, general interest blogs, the number indicates that The Advocacy Teaching Blog is thriving and achieving its purpose as an on-line resource and communication center for trial advocacy teachers.

As one of the blog's founders, I am grateful for our readers and guest bloggers. We've been blessed with a treasure trove of insightful articles and comments from a group of truly gifted judges, practitioners and professors who love to teach and are willing to share their knowledge with others.

And with our chief correspondent from Down Under, Hugh Selby, we offer an international perspective to advocacy and a different way of teaching--material that is literally available nowhere else in the world. A few weeks ago, I had a telephone conversation with a blog reader from St. Louis. "Where did you find Hugh Selby?" he asked. "He has some amazing insights. I love reading his articles. He really knows his stuff." I met Hugh at the Stetson Educating Advocates conference a few years ago. Charlie Rose had met him at a NITA course, courtesy of Mark Caldwell, who is a master at finding and collecting great advocacy teachers from all over the world.

I agreed with my St. Louis friend about Hugh, and I reflected to myself that without the miracle of the internet, this St. Louis/Canberra mind connection might never have been made. There are other teachers of advocacy out there like Hugh, geniuses who work outside the spotlight, quietly and thoughtfully influencing students and colleagues. We need to hear those voices, and this blog is an ideal platform--perhaps even the only forum--to make that happen.

As we head towards the next 20,000 page views, we'd like to hear more from you, and from more of you. Don't worry about being mocked, ridiculed or dismissed. Our audience is an accepting one, full of people who love the art and science of advocacy and are always looking for ways to improve.

If you are receiving the blog posts via email, take the time to click the link to the blog at the bottom of every email. Comment on blog posts using the blog's built-in comment function. You can add additional ideas and suggestions to any blog post. I've received a number of insightful email responses to blog articles from readers, and I've often asked for permission to post the responses as blog comments.

I follow several blogs, and one of the best features of most blogs is the comments that follow a blog posting. I'd love to see our blog readers interact with our articles and each other by using the comments section of the blog.

For instance, we have a fantastic opportunity as a community to discuss the very real issue of bad behavior and cheating at trial competitions. Temple's Eddie Ohlbaum has created a new set of model rules of conduct (available here) for trial competitions and has persuaded several competitions to use them this year. A recent blog posting, also by Eddie and available here, discusses some of the issues that have arisen with these new rules. It would be wonderful to get your comments about the whether such rules are needed, the language of the rules, how they've worked in competitions so far, and whether we should start naming and shaming unethical teams and schools.

In addition, if you are grappling with an advocacy issue, send us an email and we can post your question to the blog. With our audience of experts, we can help solve nearly any dilemma.

Finally, share the blog with others. I regularly email guest blog articles to my students and colleagues. Some of the very best advocacy tips I've ever seen are found in written form exclusively on this blog.

Thanks for your support!

Chris Behan

Sent from my iPad

ATB Reaches One-Year Anniversary

Dear Friends,

June 3 marked the one-year anniversary of The Advocacy Teaching Blog. Initially, the blog's founding contributors—Chris Behan, Charlie Rose and Hugh Selby—also comprised its entire readership. Today, although the blog is by no means a juggernaut in cyberspace, we've grown slowly and steadily. As of this writing, we have approximately 140 subscribers who receive e-mail copies of every blog posting. In addition, there have been nearly 14,000 separate page views of the blog. We have readers all over the world, from the UK to the Middle East to the Pacific Rim.

Best of all, we've had a steady stream of guest contributors who love advocacy teaching and write thoughtful pieces about it. These guest authors include judges, practitioners, NITA members and law school professors. Topics have included how to become an advocacy teacher, the use of courtroom technology, how to teach voir dire, the role of advocacy training in the law school curriculum, and many more.

We hope Year Two of the blog's existence continues (and enlarges) the trend of audience participation and guest contributions. As we've stated from the beginning, we believe the trial advocacy teaching community is a group of remarkably gifted and thoughtful people. All of us have questions about how to improve as teachers and advocates; many of us have experiences and insights that can help others. In a world of financial constraints, law school politics and geographical isolation from each other, we don't have enough opportunities to meet in professional groups to bond with each other and to share. On-line forums such as this blog can help to bridge gaps and create a "go-to" resource for questions, answers, thoughts and insights.

If you have not yet contributed a guest article to the blog, make a goal to do so in the coming year. It's as simple as writing an e-mail and sending it to cbehan@siu.edu. We'll edit it, format it and post it for you (all with your approval, of course). Even easier than that is to take a moment and add a comment to an existing article. As dedicated blog readers know, the comments are often the best part of a blog.

Thanks for being a part of this blog.

All the best,

 

Chris Behan

Charlie Rose

Hugh Selby

Ask not what this Blog can do for you, ask what you can do for the Blog

Pulled into the gas station this morning to fill up the tank. Had to wait a minute of so until the cars in front left. That had me remembering my first job as a teenager, working on the apron to put in the gas (it was standard or super grade, nicely leaded), check the oil and the water (including the battery levels), take the cash inside and bring back the change.

The cars were the thing. A few of them had disc brakes and power steering. I remember the first turbo – the owner had cut a hole in the engine compartment cover to give it room.

This morning no one came out to help and I paid with a card. But I didn't have to add any oil or water and the gas was unleaded. I pay a lot more for the gas but the same amount takes me a lot further, with less emissions, and in a much safer car. So that’s progress and I have benefited from it.

This blog, the site you’re at now, is a bit like the ‘once upon a time’ gas station and the cars that came and went. People with a need are pulling in, taking some teaching and practice fuel away, and coming back for more. I’m happy about that. My fellow blog managers Chris and Charlie are happy about it too. But we need to improve the ‘fuel’ so that you – the readers and users – come back with better equipment that needs higher quality fuel for improved results.

Visit or stay on site for five minutes now and scroll through the blog, or use the subject index to the right of the main page to select all the pieces on a topic that interests you.

There’s much useful information but a void when it comes to comment and responding to the hard questions ( Voir dire discussion being the notable exception). Check out the Cross-examination and Mock Trial Competition pieces for live issues.

For those of you with a role in Mock Trial Competitions there’s still plenty of reasons to contribute - to respond to comments made, or to add another perspective. Our theme this April is still ‘ethics and professionalism’, but you’re most welcome to travel your own route.

There used to be lots and lots of gas stations. Many of them closed down. Blogs are the same – all over the place for now, but many won’t survive.

To make this a blog that you want to come back to please:

1. Tell your litigator and advocacy teaching colleagues about it and give them the link http://advocacyteaching.blogspot.com/

2. Tell them to email Chris Behan on cbehan@law.siu.edu so that he adds them to the email list for instant copy of new pieces;

3. Be a part of the advocacy innovation and improvement by adding comments or writing a piece that shares your wisdom; and,

4. Prove Charlie Rose is right. He says the ‘rule of three is all’. There’s 3 things above for you to do, no more, no less.

Happy New Year from the Advocacy Teaching Blog

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year to you from the Advocacy Teaching Blog administrators: Chris Behan, Charlie Rose and Hugh Selby (names presented in alphabetical, but reverse chronological, order). We hope you have the chance to reflect on the successes of the past year and make plans for a fantastic 2011.

Today marks the seventh month of this blog’s existence. As we mentioned when we started the blog, we hope that it will serve as an on-line informational resource for courtroom advocacy teachers and students, wherever you’re from: the world of practice, the judiciary, or academia. We want your comments, stories, teaching tips, questions and answers.

The blog has experienced steady growth in guest authors and readers, far more than we had thought would occur at this stage in the blog’s development. Distinguished judges, practitioners and professors have written guest columns that have been well-received. As of today, we have over 100 regular subscribers who receive automatic e-mail blog updates. In addition, the blog has readers from all over the world: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey, Israel, India, Dubai, Kenya, Kuwait, and the United States, to name a few.

So, where do we go from here? We have a few suggestions to increase the value of the blog for you and others.

1. Visit the blog often.

2. Take the time to browse the blog. Every article is indexed by subject, in alphabetical order. Most articles have multiple index entries. Click on the links for each subject and see what interests you. If you read a blog posting you like, forward it on to others (there is a little envelope button underneath each entry that permits you to do this).

3. Comment on blog entries. Add your own voice and suggestions to the blog. This includes old articles. Your observations will undoubtedly benefit others. For those of you who receive blog entries via e-mail, there is a link at the bottom of every e-mail that says "Comment on this blog posting by clicking on http://advocacyteaching.blogspot.com/ and using the blog's comment function."

4. Forward to Colleagues and/or Students. If you are teaching and find a blog article that would be helpful to your colleagues or students, forward it to them.

5. Link. Link to the blog on your course and/or organization websites. We can return the favor for you!

6. Write an article! The process is easy. If there’s a subject you’re interested in, just send an e-mail with your article to cwbehan@gmail.com. We’ll take care of the rest. To quote Hugh Selby, “Read us, question us, comment to us, and become us.” Not a bad mantra.

7. Review a Case File. If you’d like to write, but aren’t sure what to write about, review a case file. We’d love to develop an on-line bank of case-file reviews to assist instructors and course managers in selecting teaching case files. A template for reviewing them is on the blog at http://advocacyteaching.blogspot.com/search/label/Case%20files%20reviewed.

8. Subscribe to the blog. There are a couple of ways to do it:

--If you are technically adept, subscribe using the RSS feed buttons located just above the subject-matter index on the blog.

--If you’d like to receive an automatic e-mail of every blog posting, contact us at the Contact Us button on the blog, or send an e-mail to cwbehan@gmail.com.

All the Best,

Chris Behan

Charlie Rose

Hugh Selby

Good luck in the New Year!

New Blog Developments

As noted in Charlie Rose's blog post below, the blog is now linked to a YouTube Channel with advocacy videos. For now, Charlie has created and posted all the videos on the YouTube Channel, but that will change gradually over time. In addition, we have created a Facebook Group for the blog. If there are topics or comments you'd like to see addressed on the blog, please leave comments on the wall.

Welcome to the Blog

Stetson University College of Law hosts an annual Educating Advocates/Teaching Skills Conference in Gulfport, Florida . Since its inception, the conference has grown from a few participants and faculty members to maximum capacity. Participants include trial and appellate advocacy teachers from a variety of backgrounds: practitioners, judges, full-time and part-time law school faculty members from the United States, Colombia, and Mexico. The faculty includes distinguished advocacy teachers--practitioners, judges, professors, and non-lawyers--from the United States, Scotland and Australia.

The conference has grown quickly in scope and importance because it fulfills a real need. In the recent past, advocacy teachers have lacked a forum in which to meet, learn their craft, and generate ideas to improve the quality of their teaching--and, by extension, the quality of advocacy in their nations' courtrooms. Somewhat surprisingly in the age of the internet, trial advocacy teachers have not created listservs, blogs, or other on-line communities.

Interestingly, about the same time as the Stetson conference was discussing the need for an on-line advocacy teaching resource, many of our colleagues who teach for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy had the same discussion via e-mail.

The time is ripe for creating an on-line community for advocacy teachers.

We hope this blog will begin to fill the need we all have to connect with each other, learn from each other, and improve our teaching.

Please participate in our blog. We intend to post commentary, teaching tips, and other resource materials from guest bloggers.