Oral Advocacy in ihe Academic Legal Context: Discourse Practices and Second Language Socialization

Of all of the tasks that law students must complete during their legal studies, arguably none evoke as much fear and dread as do oral advocacy performances in so-called ‘moots’. In a moot, similar to a mock trial, students are provided with a set of facts for a simulated dispute. They then work in teams and play the roles of advocates for different parties to that dispute, researching the law and formulating legal arguments that are recorded in a written memorandum. Finally, they orally present these arguments as part of a hearing before one or more judges, usually members of the legal profession. Thus, moots involve written discourse in the initial formulation of arguments and spoken discourse in the oral presentation of arguments to judges. The advocacy skills that are required for this task are extremely demanding and students must be able to think on their feet and respond to the questions of their professional judges. For students with English as a second language, like the vast majority of law students in Hong Kong, the task, which is performed in English, is a particularly challenging one. In spite of these challenges, there is little empirical research that language teachers and legal skills teachers can draw on, in order to make decisions about how best to teach the language of oral advocacy in the academic legal context. This project will address this gap by focusing on two key areas: 1) the discourse practices of oral advocacy, including the target spoken and written texts that students create and the processes that they go through to create them; 2) the learning process. The project will use a mixed-methods research design, drawing on a wide range of data sources, including: recorded team meetings and field notes, students’ written memoranda and oral advocacy performances, comments from their teachers and peers, interviews with teachers and students. The study will result in a detailed linguistic description of the key genres of oral advocacy and a taxonomy of learning processes, demonstrating the range of interactions that may foster the development of language skills and competencies. These findings will be of use to the many law students and their teachers around the world who take part in mooting competitions, or are otherwise engaged in oral advocacy tasks in the academy.