intensive is intensive
When they say it's an intensive week for advocacy, they weren't kidding. And now with 4 tasks done and one more to go, I can finally breathe a bit easier.
I'm just going to write an essay about what have I done in the last 3 days, so people may appreciate why I had disappeared of late, and am suffering from major sleep deprivation:
Monday-
- Mention (non-assessable, 9am), which took me 5mins of copying from the textbook. However, when presented, it was awful because the judge was nasty. I didn't end up saying what I was supposed to because the judge believes my matterwas incorrectly lodged in the first place. That was not in the facts I was given! [Stress meter = 80/100]
- Bail application (non-assessable, 11am), which took me about 4 hours of looking at and understanding what to do (including reading the text). The judge was criticising me on my poor court manner. I was apparently saying "I believe", "the fact being" (in general sense) etc. which is poor court speak because firstly, the court does not care what you believe in, rather you say "I submit", and also secondly, fact is a legal term, and saying "that fact is" is incorrectly used. I was stopped by the judge many times in my 3min application.. . not something that happened with the others. But I did have the hardest case to deal with- would you grant bail to a guy caught with 12 kg of cannibis? [Stress meter = 120/100]
- Lectures (2pm-5pm), and it took us through all the information we had to know for the real assessments on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
- Plea of guilty (assessable, 12:34pm), which is saying to the judge that the client wants to plead guilty to the charge, and he's really sorry so could you please give them a more lenient sentence. Do note that these are all held in the UTS law rooms, and they are setup like a courtroom. There was a lot of process and procedure to follow even from first entering into the room. This one went okay, I had prepared enough and made up enough stuff to support my application. It was granted. FYI- my client pleaded guilty to a high-range PCA meaning he was drink driving with blood alcohol 0.16. He had 4 priors, and all were drinking and driving offences. I had my work cut out... The plea went for 5minutes. The judge interrupted me many times to ask me questions about what I had said, which I gave a direct reply to in most instances. I was caught out for trying to avoid a quesion though haha. [Stress meter 200/100]
- Defended Hearing (assessable, 9am), which is basically what you see on courtroom dramas. To let you better understand, I was prosecutor for a case in which someone stole from Myer Chatswood. I had a case witness who was the loss prevention officer, which I had to examine in court to get evidence. All the etiquette and protocol were in place to do so regarding what questions you could(n't) ask, etc. The defence lawyer was entitled to cross examine, and I was allowed to do the same with their defendant. Sound intimidating? It freakin was! But the marker and the judge were really nice and they commented how we did after each witness, so it helped us improve as the hearing progressed. It was really good thinking back on it. I actually didn't feel too nervous because they were so nice, and they gave good feedback when it was required. I was commented upon from the outset by the judge who said "Mr Lau, would you mind rephrasing the question please?" (for law people: I was asking several leading questions at the beginning of my exam-in-chief). The only other hard part about it was when we recipricated roles and I became a witness, I had a tonne of facts to remember. Being in the witness box is really quite scary and you're being scrutinised by a cross-examiner! [Stress level: 70/100] That's also because I was assessed first and was witness afterward
benny | Wednesday, November 26, 2008 
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they all sound so dramatic (like the ones in drama) and scary sh*t!! well now u can relax and come out to play la~~~
good work!! :)