So what's the Ancient Art of Advocacy all about? And why...

Claire Bradley BA, MSc, MA (European Law)Good questions without entirely rational answers! As a legal academic looking at crossing over with the objective of qualifying as a barrister, I found myself exploring advocacy. Something I found surprising was that there seemed to be a distinct lack of what I would view as professional learning resources for prospective advocates, particularly those transferring from other disciplines. Lots of many excellent books, but no accessible training courses to support budding advocates, and definitely not the types of quirky resource that can lighten the load of learning.

Historically barristers learned advocacy through studying classical rhetoric. Intrigued by that concept, I thought that if that traditional approach to learning had worked so well for so many years it merited a bit of investigation. As I delved into the history of advocacy I became fascinated that the rhetorical devices developed and taught by the ancient Greek and Roman orators had as a consequence survived and are still in use by many leading practitioners today.

Mainly for my own amusement and to feed my own curiosity I started to research further. The more I investigated, the more fascinating I found the history of advocacy, and the skill of noted advocates in the trials in which they featured, and I thought it would be a good idea to pull together the threads of these researches, not only to help me with gaining the advocacy skills I wanted to acquire for myself, but for others interested in discovering more of the dark arts of advocacy.

On the way I found myself meandering through the forests of British legal history discovering many gems of cases, some notable for the advocacy skills displayed, others that showed how sometimes the legal system could be manipulated for political reasons, and other rather more uplifting stories of how the judiciary was confounded by juries that refused to be intimidated.

I have also included other notable cases, some because of the notoriety of the participants, some because of the notoriety of the cases themselves, and some because I just found them historically interesting!

Quite early in the process it was pointed out to me that "there's a book in that", but instead I chose the option to create a website, on the basis that it makes it easier to organically grow, adding new content over time, and that it would also provide the opportunity to create an online community around the topic and add more formal teaching resources to help aspiring advocates.

As a professional university law lecturer with over 20 years teaching and course development experience at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, I felt it time  to bridge the gap between the informal advocacy resources on the site with more formal teaching resources, and I have developed an entire formal learning pathway for new pupil barristers, trainee solicitor advocates, and any other legal professionals training to be advocates.

This is not a law course, nor is it a Bar Training Course, but is a comprehensive, structured, modular course that provides all the advocacy learning resources that pupils are expected to cover under the eye of their pupil supervisors during both their First and Second Sixes, so is consequently relevant to anyone aiming to represent clients in a legal setting.

So, the Ancient Art of Advocacy continues as a smorgasbord of free learning resources; a mixture of examples of historical cases, examinations of some of the ancient (and some less ancient) orators and rhetorical practices, with case examples that demonstrate many of the rhetorical techniques discussed, but now expanded with a formal professional course essential to budding advocates. 

I hope you will find The Ancient Art of Advocacy equally interesting and useful at whatever stage of your professional career in advocacy!

Claire Bradley