From the waist up: developing psychomotor skills for the court room

ABSTRACT

A vital aspect of successful advocacy is effective engagement by the advocate with the Bench (and jury). However, rarely are these skills naturally occurring or at least the natural (untailored) psychomotor repertoire is not necessarily well adapted to advocacy. More often these skills are developed or refined to the specific requirements of advocacy by mooting practice. Assisting future advocates to develop effective psychomotor skills therefore is a core component of any mooting programme. This article explains the relevance of the psychomotor domain to advocacy and identifies the matters that must be addressed with mooters in order for them appropriately to develop these skills. In so doing, it positions the mooting psychomotor domain in context with the cognitive and affective domains.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Hamlet to First Player: Act 3 Scene II.

2. See also Johnson and Catano (2002).

3. The definition of ‘proprioception’ remains controversial, but in this context, the less technical version – the system (generally described as sensorimotor) which “assists in the knowledge of where a limb is in space” (Lephart & Fu, 2000), expanded to cover the knowledge of how the whole of the musculo-skeletal system (including, for example, facial muscles) is deployed at any given time.

4. In one particular instance where an excellent mooter was appearing in the ICC as Prosecutor, he gave an almost flawless performance, receiving 99 out of 100 from the judges, who also awarded him the ‘Best Trial Lawyer’ at the competition. The only remotely negative comment from the bench was that he was a bit wooden, including his voice, which lacked any real dynamic dimension. This had been identified relatively early in the preparation for the moot, and he had practised to inject more dynamics into his voice for the oral presentation in competition. As a Prosecutor, he was conscious of the role as being to present the case fairly but firmly, resisting the temptation to inject too much ‘passion’ into his voice. But even in this specific role, which does call for detachment and dispassionate presentation (as opposed to the role of Victims’ Counsel or Defence Counsel), some level of vocal dynamics is still required to give colour to the bare words.

5. In International Phonetic Alphabet: løʁø dybϵ.

6. (1914) 33 NZLR 659.

7. [1995] HCA 15; (1995) 183 CLR 655 (9 November 1995).

8. [2011] NSWSC 1213 (17 October 2011).

9. Although the relative significance of bone conduction and air conduction differs according to the sounds being produced, the overall contribution of each of the two methods of sound production is approximately equal (see Von Békésy, 1949; Pörschmann, 2000; Reinfeldt et al., 2010).

10. As an indicator of the extent to which professional voice users utilise significantly lower pitch than the general population, consider that for male subjects, Kaufman records mean SFFs (Speaking Fundamental Frequencies) of 203.5 8.6 Hz for professional voice users as opposed to 220.1 11.3 Hz – a drop of approximately a full tone.