Some advice on the Basics of Oral Presentation

1. Speech structure
2. Dealing with judges questions properly
3. Comments on tone and style

Speech structure
The general rule is, when you’re structuring your speech, you need
to begin by setting out what you’re going to say. Then, you need to
go on to say it, and finally you say wat you’ve already said.

Step one is to draw a map for the judge, so for example you might
say something like “You’re honor, I will be addressing question one
in the moot problem, that is, whether the threats of violence made
by the police to the suspect constituted a breach of article 3 of the
European Convention on Human Rights. In addressing that
question, I’m going to make two key submissions: first, I will argue
that article 3 encompasses not only physical torture, but also
psychological torture and coercion. Secondly, I will show that the
coercion in question in this case meets the minimum threshold of
seriousness required for a violation of article 3 as explained in the
case law of the European Court of Human Rights.” So that is an
example of how you structure a legal issue in the introduction to
your argument, just telling the judge where it is that you’re going
to be going, what he can expect to hear from your speech. 

In step 2 you then go on to each part of your speech, signposting

as you go. Signposting just means that you’re telling the judge
what point in your overall structure you are now dealing with, what
are you going to talk about, so that she knows where on your map
you are. So, for example you might say, “Your honor, I turn now to
the first point on psychological coercion…” and you’ll then address
that point for a little while and you’ll then say something like “I
turn now to my second point on the minimum threshold of
seriousness”. The more you signpost in general, the better.

The 3rd step is that after each point you want to draw some kind
of a conclusion to remind the judge of what you’ve just shown
them. Remind them of the conlcusions that you’ve proven in this
particular stage of your argument. Finally, at the end of your
speech you want to conclude by showing what you’ve proven
overall. So, you’ll say something like “In sum, your honor, we’ve
shown that article 3 encompasses psychological coercion and
we’ve shown that the coercion in this case meets the minimum
threshold of seriousness set out in the European Convention of
Human Rights. For these reasons, we submit that the police have
violated article 3.” That is the kind of broad conclusion that you’ll
draw, showing the judge that you’ve fulfilled the burden of proof
that you’ve set for yourself. You may think this sounds repetitive
and indeed it its. That’s precisely the point, it’s a well-known and
effective arguing technique used in debating and mooting and,
indeed, in real courts, precisely because it ensures that the judge
is always absolutely certain when you are making your argument
and why you are making the point that you are making.

So that’s the brief note on structure. Let’s turn now to the question
of dealing with judges’ interventions.

Judges’ questions
Here I want to address three aspects: I want to talk about the
questions themselves, about being appropriately deferential and
about how to incorporate materials in your speech in responses to
judges’ questions.

Firstly, the biggest mistake that people make in mooting is

thinking they have to conclude their speech as it is set out and
finish it no matter what. The most important thing is to answer the
judges’ questions, it doesn’t matter whether you get through your
speech as you originally planned it or not. If you can, that’s
wonderful, but it is really a side issue.

Imagine that you are in a real court. The judge probably already
believes some parts of your argument that you’re going to make.
So, it’s a waste of time to go over those points. The judge will have
a couple of key difficult questions that she needs the lawyers to
help her to answer. Points that aren’t clear on the case law, an
ambiguous meaning in a statute of conflicting lines of case
authority. The best thing that you can do is to provide the judge
with a structure, or a roadmap, or a recipe; to say to the judge “if
you want to figure out the answer to this case, here are the steps
that you need to follow”, and the judges will then go on to quiz you
on the finer details of the plan, the parts of the recipe that are
difficult to follow or the parts of the map that look dangerous to
them or unclear.

Bear in mind that judges are not lawyers trying to catch you out.
Sometimes they’re throwing you lifelines when they can see you’re
struggling and are helping you to interpret a line of cases. So,
don’t always view them with hostility.

Moreover, you should bear in mind that sometimes judges

deliberately pretend to be mean or difficult. Every panel of judges
tends to have that one judge, who’s trying to trip you up, to be
aggressive, to interrupt you as often as possible. They’re doing
that to test a particular set of mooting skills. So, your goal is not
to let that shake you, to remain calm and show the judge that you
remain unflustered in face of adversity.

The final thing to say here is that you will often know much more
about the topic at hand than the judges. You’ve been working on it,
and researching it for a long time. The judges will be coming at the
problem relatively fresh. So sometimes you may get a question
that’s completely off the point. In that instance, you want to deal
with it politely, you want the judge to think that they’ve asked a
good question. Again, don’t be shaken by a seemingly irrelevant
point, just deal with it, contextualize it and show why it’s not
relevant to the case at hand.