Appellate Advocacy

This Skills class is designed to prepare you for and help you excel in the 2022 Sherman Minton Moot Court competition. If you register for this course, you must also participate in the Competition. However, you are permitted to participate in the Competition without also registering for this course.

The course will be taught through a combination of asynchronous video lectures and live lectures. Multiple sections of the live lectures may be available to accommodate different 2L course schedules, and will likely occur in early evening or during the noon hour. The schedule is compressed so that students can complete the coursework before the end of October. The course will require practice rounds of oral argument before a panel of student judges, a short written briefing exercise, and both in-person and written self-assessments. There is no final exam.

Appellate argument provides our frame, but the skills that this course teaches in presenting complex facts and ideas to an audience confidently and concisely are those used daily by lawyers in many types of practice: jury trials; motion hearings; city-council debates; presentations to boards of directors. While the focus of the course is on oral advocacy, we will also examine the essential components of the appellate brief. Learning about the distinct structure and strategies of an appellate brief is vital not only to preparing for the writing phase of the moot court competition, but also to understanding key concepts such as appellate standards of review.

Feel free to contact Prof. Lane McFadden (lanemcfa@indiana.edu) with any questions. (Pass/Fail)