This article is intended for PDI Global LLC readers. Those are international architecture and construction professionals. Any legal training might help you to be successful in projects and contracts, and today, we look specifically at legal training practices in the context of moot court vs mock trial.
As a legion of lawyers have known for ages, courtrooms serve as a fascinating arena and testing ground for myriad business skills. To be blunt, most lawyers take these skills with them onto the many battlegrounds of corporate life. Lawyers are skilled negotiators and are trained professional communicators with above-average analytical and critical thinking skills. What’s more, they are expected to work seamlessly in teams and manage the complexities of large-scale, high-stakes corporate projects.
Clearly, it’s only natural to ask ourselves whether there is any relevance between the many mock trials and legal training programs that law students undergo during their studies and the related project challenges that architects and other professionals in the built environment face on a daily basis? In today’s blog, we look at how the practices of legal training in the context of two competitive differ from what architects may be familiar with.
First of all, what is the difference between moot court and mock trial? Moot court involves the oral and written presentation of an appeal brief before the entire bench of a simulated court cast of real judges. In essence, students are practicing for oral argument and developing their advocacy skills in advance of their real-world careers. Mock court, in contrast, typically involves the presentation of a simulated or real case before a jury of law student peers. The presiding judge is also a law professor or even a jury consultant.
Legal training programs rely heavily on case law and precedent. In the U.S. when lawyers argue appeals at various levels of the court, they become adept at processing complex information quickly. In many respects, they need to be able to process information at the speed of light. The same condition is present in today’s architectural and construction environments. Consider the pressure that is placed on the technical management of construction projects, whether there is a dispute or not. Speed and accuracy of information are critical.
In addition to speed, lawyers need to be able to think on their feet. Think about it this way, if you were litigating a lawsuit would you want to be caught off-guard by the opposing counsel? Effective decision-making is critical to managing construction activities, but it is equally important when you are in a high-pressure negotiation and want to close the deal.
Going back to legal training practices, lawyers need to be able to perform independently-and then come together as needed for larger litigation. Architects work in teams of all sizes. At the technical management level, standard procedures need to be put into effect. There is no doubt that architects and lawyers face similar challenges as they plan and execute numerous projects at the same time.
Like lawyers in moot court and mock trials, technical practitioners communicate continuously. Brief, concise, and accurate communication is at the heart of legal training practices. Architects and lawyers need to be able to speak and write effectively, and they need to be able to handle hostile questioning from discerning audiences. Fear of making mistakes or looking uninformed while on the hearing room floor is a constant concern. The same can be said for architects who are communicating to stakeholders in construction.
Whether you are presenting to an audience of peers, a panel of judges, or clients, communication is vital to success. So, legal training practices involving communication are directly applicable to architectural practices.
When lawyers are asked challenging questions that fall outside of their simulation, they need to develop strategies to think on their feet and respond eloquently. For instance, in legal training programs, if students are unable to respond appropriately to a question put to them by a judge, the question period is over. This is the point where an advocate has not done a good job or has not mastered his or her materials. A similar analogy applies to architects and other technical professionals in project settings.
Think about last critical moment or technical review meeting in a construction activity or contract negotiation. Have you ever considered that if you can’t answer the difficult questions being asked by your interlocutor (the lawyer), the meeting is over? The moral of the story is that good legal training programs are designed to push law students out of their comfort zone and help them develop strategies so they can handle every situation.
Architects and other professionals in the built environment face unique challenges. For instance, the fact that so many of them work in design-build consortiums or entities with risk alliances of various forms, there are constraints and unique circumstances to consider. In this context, legal training programs involving moot court and mock trials help architects and other professionals build better management structures for consortiums. That’s because they learn who the stakeholders are (i.e. clients, financiers, insurers, subcontractors).
For more information on legal training and its applications, you can visit Wikipedia’s Law School page.
