Appellate Advocacy Research Guide: Oral Argument

1. Your body -- 2. Your brain -- 3. Your voice -- 4. How to practice -- 5. Applying your skills at trial -- Appendix 1. Speaker's checklist -- Appendix 2. Video self-review checklist -- Appendix 3. Essential delivery skills while sitting for arbitration -- Appendix 4. Essential delivery skills to argue a motion or appeal.

This book is another of the texts that serve as course books for appellate advocacy classes. The authors, a retired judge and a veteran trial lawyer, lead the reader through each step of the legal writing and oral argument process highlighting and addressing the nuances of trial practice as only a veteran judge and lawyer can.

This book is designed for practitioners and law students who want to be refreshed on the basics of effective lawyering: fundamentals that they most likely learned in the first year of law school, but perhaps have forgotten. The book provides the reader with a series of checklists to turn to when undertaking a writing project or preparing for oral argument.

Introduction -- Nervousness -- Preparation -- Style -- Delivery -- Substance -- Structure -- Questions -- Rebuttal -- Conclusion.
This book is designed to introduce and cover its subject in a simple and entertaining, yet comprehensive, way. It contains chapters on such topics as style, substance, structure, questions, and rebuttal to explain effective approaches to this peculiar form of conversation.--Publisher.

The authors have organized this book around 115 principles of persuasion, 60 of which deal directly with oral argument.

Part I. Introduction and historical overview. 1. Introduction -- 2. A brief history of oral argument in the Supreme Court -- Part II. Preparation for oral argument. 3. Beginning the preparation process -- 4. Types of questions commonly asked -- 5. Moot courts -- 6. After the moot courts: the final few days -- Part III. Presentation of oral argument. 7. Basic approaches to oral argument -- 8. Common mistakes in oral arguments -- 9. Attributes of the best advocates -- Part IV. Appendices. A. Checklists -- B. Openings -- C. Examples of effective mid-argument advocacy techniques -- D. Model rebuttals.

The author has collected and arranged the most important, interesting, and penetrating statements from judges and lawyers about how to conduct an oral argument. Each didactic principle is stated, briefly explained, and then illustrated with quotations from a dazzling array of sources, ancient and modern.