A most exciting addition to the new editions of Trial Advocacy 5th Ed. and Pretrial Advocacy 6th Ed. is that they are now available with the popular Aspen Publishing CasebookConnect online platform. CasebookConnect provides many supplemental materials. Let’s take a look at some of them in the Trial Advocacy CasebookConnect platform. 

First on the CasebookConnect Platform is the Professor or instructor materials that are only accessible to the instructor and will assist the instructor in teaching, and these materials include a Teacher’s Manual and Actor’s Guide that contains role-play instructions that the teacher can give to students who will play a roles in a performance  assignments, such as instructions to a student who is assigned to play the role of a witness during a cross-examination exercise. Here is a screenshot of the contents of the Professor’s materials.

As can be seen in the above screenshot, following the Professor Materials, is a Welcome Tab with resources welcoming students to CasebookConnect and its functions. Next is Cases and Assignments Tab where the assignments for student performances are located. By clicking on the Case Files Tab, student can access the full case files for both the criminal and civil cases that are utilized for the performance assignments.

Unique to the Pretrial and Trial Advocacy books are movies that show how to perform everything from taking and defending a deposition to closing argument. Below is a screenshot of the list of movies for the Trial Advocacy book that can be accessed under the Movies Tab in the Trial Advocacy book’s CasebookConnect. Under that tab, students can access the following: an animation of an aviation crash; visuals in a settlement documentary; a video on implicit bias; and both a full movie of a demonstration trial as well as movie clips demonstrating trial advocacy skills.

Under the next Additional Materials Tab are a variety of supplemental materials, such as juror questionnaires, trial brief, motions and more.