Trial Advocacy: Planning, Analysis, and Strategy 4th Edition provides the experience and approach to thinking, planning, and performing as a practicing lawyer. The book presents a wide range of practice situations and fosters the kinds of analytic processes and skills needed to perform trial work. Today’s lawyer must be fluent with technology for case organization and courtroom presentation, as well as with alternative forms of dispute resolution. The book provides these new tools while retaining the trial lawyer skills that remain very much the same as they have throughout the history of the legal profession.

Trial Advocacy: Planning, Analysis, and Strategy, 4th Edition, is divided into 14 chapters. Each chapter covers a separate trial subject area—persuasion, jury selection, opening statement, objections, and so on. Each chapter presents a theoretical and practical approach to the particular skill that is the subject of that chapter, provides illustrations of practice as applied to hypothetical situations, and offers a series of practical and strategic pointers in the subject area.  Each chapter also includes a checklist of skills dealt with in the chapter.

Accompanying the book are Assignments which take students through the trial process in the context of the criminal and civil cases, both of which arise from a tavern shooting after which the victim dies. The assignments are intended for role play in professional workshops and legal education advocacy classes.

Supplemental Content

79 Criminal and Civil Assignments are based on one fact pattern for a civil wrongful death and criminal homicide case, Summers v. Hard and State v. Hard.

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The Trial Advocacy 4th Edition Case Files provide factual and legal information for the 79 criminal and civil assignments accompanying the Trial Advocacy book. The Assignments are based on two fictitious cases – State v. Hard and Summers v. Hard.

The Case Files contain documents, such as witness statements, expert reports, deposition excerpts and photographs, scene diagrams, and more. Also, the Case Files contain statutes, court rules, and research memoranda. The research memoranda are a special feature; they are composed of fictional cases from the fictional jurisdiction, the State of Major. The memos provide the research that students or practitioners need to deal with the multitude of legal issues in the Assignments. Of course, an instructor may prefer that students or practitioners instead research and use appropriate cases and statutes from your jurisdiction.

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To acquire an access code, you need to have purchased the book. Students, please contact your professor to obtain an access code.

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Trial Advocacy 4th Edition contains two movies that can be streamed on this website.

The first movie is a trial demonstration movie that shows experienced lawyers demonstrating trial advocacy skills in the Freck case, a hypothetical wrongful death case. The Freck case is inspired by real cases, including one that is the subject of a true crime thriller, A Rose for Her Grave (True Crime Files) by Ann Rule. These demonstrations provide you with the experience of seeing a trial conducted from beginning to end.  You can also view scenes in which the trial lawyer explains his or her trial strategy.
The second movie is a detective-guided crime-scene tour that takes you to the Garage tavern where the fictitious State v. Hard and Summers v. Hard cases all began.

To access these movies, use your access code on one of these pages:

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Access for Others

To acquire an access code, you need to have purchased the book. Students, please contact your professor to obtain an access code.

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The Teacher’s Manual is password protected for Professors and contains pointers on ways to plan for and to teach a trial course. The Trial Advocacy 4th Edition manual includes teaching notes for each Assignment. A sample trial syllabus indicates how to organize a trial course and a civil and/or criminal mock full day trial. Moreover, all the instructions for performing a full day mock trial in State v. Hard included.

 

To print or download, use your access code on this page:

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To acquire an access code, you need to have purchased the book. Professors only.

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The Actors’ Guide (password protected for professors) contains confidential factual material for role-playing by the students or other witnesses and attorneys who are the focus of the 79 trial Assignments. For example, a student can be assigned to the role of a witness who is to be cross-examined by another student. The Actors’ Guide contains instructions on how to play the assigned role.


A FEW POINTS CONCERNING THE TRIAL ACTORS’ GUIDE


The Actors’ Guide is a companion to the criminal and civil cases of State v. Hard and Summers v. Hard found in the Trial Advocacy, 4
th Edition. The Guide consists of materials describing the witnesses and providing confidential instructions for student attorneys. The Actors’ Guide materials immerse students in role plays which are realistic in detail, yet crafted to raise specific issues appropriate to the skill which is being performed.


SUMMARY OF WITNESS INFORMATION FOR TRIAL
. The Summary of Witness Information section summarizes what the witnesses will say for each Assignment.


GENERAL WITNESS INSTRUCTIONS
explain the actor’s general responsibilities when role-playing a witness.


ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
provide special, confidential instructions for the person who will role play a particular Assignment.


CONFIDENTIAL WITNESS INFORMATION (CWI)
instructions contain all the information an actor needs to perform a particular role-play.

To print or download, use your access code on this page:

Access for Professors

To acquire an access code, you need to have purchased the book. Professors only.

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To print or download, use your access code on this page:

Access for Professors
 
Access for Others

To acquire an access code, you need to have purchased the book. Students, please contact your professor to obtain an access code.

Buy Now

Table of Contents for Trial Advocacy: Planning, Analysis, and Strategy

Chapter 1.   The Trial Toolbox: The Book, the Case Files, Trial Movie, and Website

Chapter 2.   Persuasion Principles

Chapter 3.   Case Theory and Theme Development

Chapter 4.   Jury Selection: Two-Way Exchange

Chapter 5.   Opening Statement: Storytelling

Chapter 6.   Making and Meeting Objections

Chapter 7.   Introducing Exhibits

Chapter 8.   The Visual Trial and Today’s Technology

Chapter 9.   Direct Examination: Building the Case

Chapter 10.  Cross-Examination: Concession Seeking

Chapter 11.  Expert Witnesses: Yours and Theirs

Chapter 12.  Jury Instructions: The Jury’s Law

Chapter 13.  Closing Argument: Art of Argument

Chapter 14.  Trial Preparation and Case Management

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