These advocacy workshops conducted by the Law Society are incredibly draining (apart from getting up once for Addy’s baby shower I spent all of Sunday under the bedcovers trying to recover.) You get four cases to prepare and you go into a real courtroom in the State Courthouse (not a university moot court!) to conduct them. Your classmates are members of the public. One trainer plays the role of judge and grills you (a senior lawyer or in some cases an actual District Judge). Another trainer observes you and immediately after gives you feedback, and then they give you an on-the-spot demonstration, showing you how they would have got themselves out of those holes you got into. You then go into another room with a third trainer, and watch the video playback together (deeply discomfiting for people without rhino hides) while he points out your unconscious tics and gestures and weaknesses in body language and how you are modulating your voice and pacing your delivery and all the other problems of style — no one comes out of that room without looking ashen and demoralised. And then you do it all over again for the next case, and the next, and the next. By mid-morning you are deathly tired, in a state of low level of surging panic, and feeling quite humiliated because you are just so bad at this and despairing of getting any better. But they do do one a helluva good. And one day perhaps I will be competent at this yet.