Not quite a five star experience
The most exciting aspect of Trial Advocacy is, of course, that it is taught by real-life litigators, who offer constructive criticism (and, once in a blue moon, some praise) and grade students on their performances in the weekly workshops.
What is Trial Advocacy (the Course)?
Trial Advocacy, referred to by most as ‘Trial Ad’ is an upper-year, four-credit course in which students learn the basics of all the skills they need to run a trial. Evidence Law is a pre-requisite or co-requisite for Trial Advocacy.The course structure consists of two classes per week, with one being a lecture where students are taught a skill (for example, how to do an examination-in-chief or cross-examination) and the other being a workshop where students get to practice the skill. Given the “intensive nature of the course,” attendance for all classes and workshops is mandatory.
The course culminates in students running a final trial with a partner and showing off the skills they have worked on throughout the semester. In addition to attending and preparing for lectures and workshops and preparing for them, students taking the course are also required to complete weekly written assignments, though these are unpgraded. From my experience, these were sometimes just the preparation that you would need to do for the workshop anyway (e.g. writing out your cross-examination questions)—, but sometimes they were something different, like writing out your theory of the case. The most exciting aspect of Trial Advocacy is, of course, beingthat it is coachedtaught by real-life litigators, who offer constructive criticism (and, once in a blue moon, some praise) whoand grade students on their performances in the weekly workshops. This year, 14 out of the 29 members of the teaching faculty were Crown Attorneys of some form, while the other 15 were a mixture of family lawyers, criminal defence counsel, and civil litigators.
While Trial Advocacy was definitely a great (and intense) learning experience, some aspects of my experience were not the best. So, as much as I would highly recommend the course to anyone, including those who aren’t sure they want to do litigation, I wanted to share a full picture of what the course was like to ensure that everyone who wants to take it is as prepared as possible for what it may entail.
The Highs
As previously mentioned, getting to learn from litigators was a great experience. I think it is a nice way to make connections with lawyers and get practical tips on things that would be hard to figure out on your own, like how to pause and take off your glasses to emphasize a cross-examination answer that really helps your case. Since most of law school is theoretical in nature, it’s nice to take a course that is very practical. The skills you learn are extremely useful and necessary if you are someone who hopes to be in court early on in your career. While I’m sure you could learn on the job, taking Trial Ad lays what I think is a vital foundation—plus, unlike mooting, you don’t have to try out to get the oral advocacy experience of Trial Ad (however you are at the mercy of Cognomos).
While learning trial skills was interesting, the most enjoyable parts of the course were definitely when we got to apply them. When learning cross-examination, we got to practice on members of the Toronto Police Service, which was great practice, especially for those of us who want to do criminal defence (i.e. me). For approximately the first half of the course, we worked with a problem surrounding the alleged illegal sale of cannabis by store clerk Pat Jones to an already intoxicated man, Walter Watkins. The witnesses in the case were Officer Grasse (get it?) and Jones. In early October, we ran mini-trials with assigned partners, acting as either the Crown or defence counsel. In these mini-trials, we again got to question real-life police officers and present our cases to a panel of faculty members. Then, we sadly said goodbye to Walter Watkins, moving on to our final trial problem.
The final trial was a civil case involving a young adult, Sandy Patterson, who was severely injured after being thrown from a horse they were racing at B. Ware Riding Academy (get it?), a stable owned by Sam Bradley. In the problem, the horse, Redd, also sadly passed away. For the final trial, we got to select our own partners and we then spent many weeks working with them and the faculty, trying to perfect all the aspects of our trial—–though, as you will come to understand if you take the course, nothing is ever truly finished or perfect when it comes to Trial Ad. A few weeks before the final trial date in late November, we argued motions concerning the admission of certain pieces of evidence that had come out, namely a song posted by Sandy titled “Riding Reckless” and a vet report about other B. Ware horses that had passed away. In our case (along with many others), neither piece of evidence was admitted and the motion decision affected what arguments we could make at the final trial.
Once the day of the final trial finally arrived, the whole class headed down to the Superior Court of Justice, where we got to make our statements and question our witnesses in front of an SCJ judge and a ‘jury’ (which, in our case, was comprised of four U of T undergrad students). Each team had to bring along two people to play their side’s witnesses, and we could bring however many observers we wanted. Following our presentations, the jury rendered a verdict and gave us feedback on our performances, along with the judge. Once the final trial was over, the course was finished, apart from a celebratory pizza party. In my opinion, finishing up a bit early and not having an exam was definitely the highest high!
The Lows
Most obviously, between workshop preparation, assignment completion, and lecture attendance, Trial Ad is a big time commitment. I often opined that it felt not just like a class, but a whole additional extracurricular commitment. I suspect that it may feel somewhat similar to doing a competitive moot, but having only done the Upper Year Moot, I can’t say for sure. Nevertheless, I knew it would be heavy going into it, and at least mosta lot of the time, doing the workshops was pretty enjoyable. However, considering the amount of work the course is, it would have been nice to have received more clarity on how the grading scheme worked. Trial Ad used to be pass/fail, which I think is objectively a much better format for the course, given the fact that we were all learning as we went along and really just trying our best. Instead though, I believe that we were given ‘scores’ based on each week’s workshop performance. We never got to know these scores, and although we did get verbal feedback in the workshops, we were never given an actual understanding of how we were actually doing academically. Our grades at the end were a surprise, which could be expected in a course with a 100% exam, but in my view, the grades should not have been a surprise in a course where we were getting marked every single week.
In relation to the unclear grading scheme, the instructors told us pretty early on in the class about something called the Arnup Cup, which is a trial advocacy competition whose U of T participants are selected from the Trial Ad class. This was sort of hanging over our heads for the entire semester since it was unclear how Arnup participants would be chosen. They eventually informed us that they would be observing us during our final trials, which basically ended up consisting of various Faculty members, including the Arnup coaches, randomly coming into our courtrooms and watching for a brief amount of time. Even when those who the Arnup Cup coaches liked were chosen, they did not narrow it down fully, so those chosen still had to try out for the spots. From what I saw and experienced, the way the Arnup Cup was handled and discussed created unnecessary stress and anxiety among students who were already likely to bebeing overworked.
Now that I’ve addressed some of the more overarching issues with the course structure, I want to tell some stories about more one-off questionable issues that arose. First, when we did the motions workshop, our judge told us that “there was no way” she was letting either piece of evidence in—and no reasonable judge would. While the latter point was probably true, it was a bit disheartening to hear this when we had put effort into preparing our arguments, and when other groups had gotten one or both pieces of evidence admitted. Second, my partner was unfortunately not feeling well on the day of our final trial run through, a week before the final trial. She went through the proper procedures to be permitted to miss the class, but instead of allowing us to reschedule the run-through, I was told that I had to do both of our parts. Not only was this anxiety-inducing, because I didn’t know my partner’s components that well, but it was also exhausting to run the entire trial by myself. Last but not least was probably the biggest headache of the entire course: the agreed statement of facts snafu. For context, our final case file, which was over 100 pages long, included a set of background facts. Many students took these background facts to be fair game to use in preparing their theories of the case and strategies, but in the week leading up to the final trial, students raised questions relating to these background facts that made it clear that different groups had different understandings of what they could be used for. Therefore, the weekend before the final trial, which was on a Tuesday, our instructors informed us that we had to get together with the team we were paired with for the final trial and draft an agreed statement of facts based on the background information. This last-minute assignment was difficult to coordinate and caused unnecessary worry at a time when we were already burdened enough with final trial prep.
Final Thoughts
All in all, if I could do it over again, I would totally still choose to take Trial Ad. I am, however, glad that I took it as a 3L rather than a 2L, as I am now pretty well-versed in managing my time and dealing with stressful situations. I do also hope that the instructors and Faculty can learn from the issues that arose this year so the course can be as beneficial as it can and should be.
