The art of advocacy : renaissance of rhetoric in the law school

This paper offers some ruminations on the place of rhetoric in modern legal education and some reflections on the undergraduate module The Art of Advocacy: Mooting and Forensic Rhetoric which the author devised and taught for the first time in 2016. The ‘art’ of advocacy is one which in practice works best when it is, or appears to be, most natural; just as the most convincing acting tends to be the most naturalistic. The relation of art to nature is a puzzle that has exercised rhetoricians since at least as far back as Cicero. Perhaps one solution lies in an appreciation of the relationship between practice and habit – the ideal being technically expert practice that becomes the advocate’s second nature