The Advocate

The opening chapter of the trial-advocacy text is wider than its title suggests: it surveys the role of the advocate, the architecture of civil and criminal dispute resolution, and the practical alternatives to trial (mediation, arbitration, summary jury, mini-trial, collaborative law). It then turns to storytelling craft and persuasion fundamentals — primacy and recency, the rule of three, impact words, value alignment with decision makers — and closes with ethics and the elements of credible presentation. As a course-opener it gives professors a single chapter that orients students to the entire dispute-resolution landscape before they specialize in trial work, and it pairs naturally with a first-year ADR or pretrial-litigation survey course in addition to its home in trial advocacy.