What's Going On

December 2024 - Issue #31 (and likely the last one)

Announcing the CCLA's New Legal Professionals and Advocacy Club Committee

Starting in November, all Advocacy Club CPD and social events will be planned, coordinated and run by CCLA New Legal Professionals and Advocacy Club Committee. Co-chaired by Club members Kelli-Anne Day and Victoria Boddy, the Committee is looking to recruit members to advance its ambitious agenda. Reference the CCLA's newsletters for details. The first event was the Holiday Social (see below for details).

Going forward, the Club itself (John Hollander) will only run boot camps (see below). This is likely the final newsletter after almost 3 years.

 Advocacy Club Boot Camps

The Advocacy Club Boot Camp is the perfect introduction to civil trial advocacy for junior lawyers, paralegals, and articled/articling students who seek practical techniques for planning and conducting examinations, cross-examinations, and final argument. The Boot Camp is an experiential, small group led by a retired senior litigator, John Hollander. Want to join an active legal network with 800+ members? For greater detail of the program, visit Boot Camps - The Advocacy Club. The boot camp evolves. Currently, the boot camp features a new and effective method to teach cross-examination techniques.

We completed the Emond Harnden Boot Camp in September and the Brazeau Seller Boot Camp in October. Now we switch to Zoom until late April. If you want to participate in a Zoom boot camp, let John know here.

Going forward, participants will qualify for 8.0 hours of substantive CPD, spread over two half-days (usually a Tuesday and Thursday afternoon). The cost is $400 for lawyers and $275 for articling students and paralegals, all plus HST, payable one week in advance and not refundable. For more details about the boot camp content & format, click here.

Boot camps can also be run for one employer (firm, government department, NGO or corporation). We are currently planning two such single-firm boot camps for large firms in another province.  In-person in Ottawa between May and October or on Zoom/MS Teams any time of year. Custom-made case studies are possible. If you want to more detail, inquire here for pricing, timing and format.

We ran a boot camp for a Canadian Government Department in September, and an advanced session on cross-examination for a federal agency, in October. Both used custom-made case studies based on the needs of the employer. 

Holiday Social - Dec 4 @ 6:00 pm

The newly minted CCLA New Legal Professionals and Advocacy Club Committee conducted its first Holiday Social on Wednesday, December 4th at Rabbit Hole, 208 Sparks Street. Advocacy Club - and now CCLA - organizers Kelli-Anne Day or Victoria Boddy planned and pulled off another successful event. Many thanks to long-time Advocacy Club supporters and sponsors, Harold Geller and Brenda Hollingsworth, for sponsoring this event.

Advocacy Club Boot Camp on Substack 

My AdvocacyClub.Substack.com now presents all our techniques with far more detail than the Boot Camp or my Trial Ad class at UOttawa, with well over 60 posts on techniques about:

  • framing questions
  • case analysis
  • applying case analysis to the events in a case (Scenes)
  • preparing for direct and cross-examinations
  • conducting direct examinations
  • issues in cross-examinations
  • final argument
  • preparing yourself & your client for discovery examinations
  • dealing with issues that arise during examinations for discovery
  • I even dropped in two posts about public speaking. 

These episodes get deeply into the weeds and show how the sausage is made (choose your metaphor). 

You just can't learn these techniques anywhere else, much less on your own time. If you want access, check it out here.

This is the 31st and liklely the final issue of the newsletter. Did you appreciate receiving these? How did I doing? Let me know here.

Let's be buddies