This week I have been in London and Norfolk delivering courses for CLT.
On Monday I was running an Advocacy course which was thoroughly enjoyable, both for me and the delegates who attended. I'm keen to encourage solicitors to do their own advocacy where they feel able to. Its not that I don't instruct barristers but I do feel that having drafted all the papers in a case, actually read and written all the correspondence and spoken to the client on multiple occasions, i'm pretty well placed to present their interests in court.
I have also been involved in many cases where a frazzled barrister has confided that they picked up the two bundles for the final hearing at 7pm the night before the 1 day final hearing. Or that they have been involved in multiple cases that day and haven't had a chance to meet their client to discuss how to proceed. Or frankly, they just haven't read their brief.
These things unnerve me.
I took the advocacy specialism when I undertook the Resolution accreditation 5 years ago and so its not surprise that I now teach advocacy!
The delegates on the course asked me what other materials I use and so I have listed them below.
These aren't the only books available on advocacy, just the ones I like, have read and would go back to if I needed to do so.
Norfolk
This was a bespoke course on the FPR 2010, 6 hours of fun looking through the new rules. I found it amazing how unique the local court is in this area. It seems that the Judges "like to do things their own way". At almost every turn of the page, the practitioners would tell me their local court's take on what we were discussing! Bundles should be copied on both sides of the paper (contrary to PD22A), no documents should be served on the court in paper format, only via email. The list was endless, beware anyone moving to Norfolk, don't start practising family law until you've had a good chat to a local solicitor as otherwise you just won't know what the court expects!
05/11/11
When you subscribe to the blog, we will send you an e-mail when there are new updates on the site so you wouldn't miss them.