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The Mississippi Lawyer Summer 2015 27 The Balboa Method Preparation for Oral Argument 3. Pick who is in your corner. Rocky had Mickey a curmudgeon who hollered at him cussed him threw things at himand wanted him to suc- ceed. There was nobody better at that than Mick. You will need three of him. In my experience other lawyers add little value to your training even if you share the client. They rarely are on fire for the law. Law students are hungry. They care about case law they care about details they want you to succeed. You must have an impartial intelligent and critical moot court team and carefully-chosen law stu- dents can fit that role very well. There is an important caveat. You have to burn your ego. There is no room for it when there is a 3L young enough to be your child role-playing a justice yelling at you for not knowing the facts of your main precedent. Humble yourself and go with it. Rocky eventually had more money fame and looks than old Mick. Yet he acknowledged the unique position he was in by having a trainer. There are things you are going to know that your students do not. Keep it to yourself. Duck your head and do the reps. In the past year I have presented argu- ment multiple times at the Mississippi Supreme Court and Court of Appeals and have also argued at the Fifth and Eighth Circuits. My core team during this time has been three students from Mississippi College School of LawCandace Bowen Kasey Mitchell and Adam Porter. After dozens of hours together I know that this brilliant trio has my best interests at heart. I also know that they will be merciless in pushing me to get better. It took effort to get to that pointboth for them to have the comfort to yell at me and for me to push down my pride to listen. 4. Know your flaws. Mickey taped Rockys dominant hand down so he could strengthen his weaker punches. The trainer knew the boxer had a weak left-handed jab and needed to shore it up. Rocky hated the exercise and did not see the pointbecause he did not recognize he had a weakness in the first place. For this reason my first practice is not a live exercise at a podium. It is a table read where I meet for the first time with my team. We sit down and rough out where we are strong and where we are not. My first question is always the same wheres my weakness They always see one that I either do not know I have or that I have refused to acknowledge. Ignore a diagnosis of weakness at your peril. In training for one argument my team kept insisting that we had a problem with damages. I refused to listenin fact at one point I even told them to quit ask- ing questions about it and do what I told them to do. I let my ego get in the way. I did not see damages as a vulnerability. They did. A few days later I walked to the podi- um on High Street and got battered on damages. I had enough training to respond to the questions but was shocked that it was a key focus of the entire argu- ment. I was surprised. My moot court team was not. I quit fighting with them after that. 5. Make this argument your title shot. In the past before I went to the podi- um I internalized that immediately after- wards I could be smacked by a car while crossing Canal Street for lunch at the Bon- Ton. The last impression I left on this earth would be a digital file of what I said after walking down the Great Hall at the John Minor Wisdom Courthouse in New Orleans. With our States appellate courts that memory would be heightened by recent advancements in their recording techniques a high-definition video on YouTube livestreamed and then preserved for colleagues clients family and Facebook friends to see. My personal goal used to be just that I would actually present argument at the Mississippi Supreme Court. I felt like that would mean I was a real lawyer. After the first time I wanted to go againbut do better. After the second time at the Court of Appeals I wanted another shot to get quicker on responses. After a long 20 minutes one morning in New Orleans I wanted to go back to name all the cases I knew but could not manage to get out. Then I got a schedule and a moot court team. After that my focus changed. It was no longer that this could be my last argu- ment but that it might be the best chance for my client to prevail. It was not a tomb- stone but a title shot. The focus was no longer about me as an individual but about how I could best train to honor my time in the well of the Court. When I walk away from the podium now it is often with blood down the front of my shirt. Before that actually caused me griefthat I had taken a punch or missed an opportunity to respond. I only focused on the failures. Now my concen- tration is on preparing and honoring my clients case and the Courts time to the best of my ability. There are many times I do not prevail. There are better lawyers than I am there are weaknesses I might not perceive there are details from cases that I will forget. That does not change that through my preparation I can strive for the best possible result. Some might protest that clients will not pay for this type of preparation. Indeed some clients will not. If they do not eat the time cut the bill. This is about becoming the best advocate you can be. Let that be the goal regardless of whether every minute is compensated. Make your next argument and every one a title shot. I