Teaching & coaching
Trial advocacy can be taught. I've watched it happen.
A good cross-examination is a piece of engineering. A good closing is a piece of architecture. Both can be built, practiced, and improved, and that's what I spend a lot of my time doing with law students.
Excellence demands consistency
It's the line I come back to most with students. Anyone can have a great round. The advocates who win deliver the same quality in the fourth round of a tournament that they delivered in the first practice, in front of a tired judge, with a witness who just went off script.
You don't get there on talent. You get there on repetition, honest feedback, and some way of knowing whether you're actually improving.
How I coach
Structure first. A cross is built in chapters. A closing has an architecture. Students learn the frame before they learn the flourish, because the frame is what holds up under pressure.
Feedback that names things. "Good job" helps nobody. Useful feedback points to the question, the moment, and the fix.
Fit matters. Part of coaching is matching the right coach to the right student, and the right student to the right role. I make those calls on evidence, and I change them when the evidence changes.
Practice isn't the same as getting better. Running the round again isn't improvement. Changing one thing, watching what happens, and running it again is.
The St. Thomas Law Trial Team
I'm the faculty advisor to the St. Thomas University College of Law Trial Team. During my time with the program, it has earned a top-five national ranking, won multiple state and national championships, and been invited to some of the most selective trial competitions in the country.
I was on that team as a student. Coaching it now is one of the best parts of my week.
Where AI fits
AI can draft a closing argument in seconds. It can't tell you whether a jury will believe it, and it can't stand at the podium for you.
So I use it the way you'd use a good sparring partner. It plays the witness who won't cooperate. It raises the objection you didn't see coming. It finds the hole in your theory before the other side does. The thinking still has to belong to the student, and the coaching still has to come from someone who has been in the room.