Competitions: Oral Advocacy

This class is designed to prepare and support the 3L members of BU Law's extramural moot court teams who also serve as Stone and Albers competition preceptors. This course will focus on improving students' appellate oral advocacy skills through a series of course meetings that involve skills training and in-class exercises. For the first month of the semester, the seminar will meet weekly as a group and will focus on oral advocacy skills, including how to prepare, argument organization, and presentation best practices. For the remainder of the spring semester, students participating in spring competitions will meet on an arranged schedule to conduct at least four one-hour oral argument practices for their competition and to attend and to serve as judges for at least two other one-hour oral argument practices for other competitions. Students serving as Albers preceptors will score briefs and oral arguments. These Albers preceptors will meet to work on editing and feedback skills. All students participating in spring competitions will be required to write a reflection paper due no later than two weeks after the close of their competition. There will be no final exam. Note that students who are participating on extramural moot court teams that are assigned to serve as either Stone or Albers preceptors must still serve as preceptors even if they do not enroll in this course. ENROLLMENT LIMIT: 25 students. GRADING NOTICE: CR/NC graded. NOTE: This class does not satisfy the Upper-class Writing Requirement. ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENT: A student who fails to attend the first class or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar will be administratively dropped from the course.