Earlier this year, NITA added another tool to NITA’s trial advocacy toolbox for teaching and learning advocacy skills: the NITA Blog! For the inaugural blog, we are asking our superb NITA faculty for submissions about their “favorite advocacy critique,” with an emphasis on the “prescription” or “fix.” This submission should be a short article on how you would improve a person’s advocacy skills. We ask you to describe in writing the critique that you believe is most helpful to participants. You should focus on the prescription, or how to fix the skill performance to make it better. (Or, if you were a participant in a NITA program, describe a critique that was effective for you.)
The article should be about describing the critique; not a verbatim critique. We do not want to include any specific “playback” so as to avoid having a past participant read the blog and say you were specifically writing about him or her. We will adhere to our policy of “what goes on a NITA programs stays within the program”.
You can see an example article here: Using Notes at Trial. If you would like to submit an article to be considered for one the “Best Advocacy Fix” posts, please submit your ideas here.
Additionally, with help from many in the NITA community, we have already established a “Quick Tips” theme of posts, NITA publication reviews, and Studio71 video posts, and are working on more concepts for blog posts that will aid in the teaching and learning of advocacy skills.
Although I am a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to online technology, I have come to view the NITA blog as a wonderful online brainstorming session. All of us at NITA hope to get a variety of views on what is effective for our teachers and participants. NITA will act as an editor to assure quality control, but we look forward to an open and diverse online discussion.
Please follow the NITA Blog by clicking on the “follow” button in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, and then providing your email address. (See images below)
Sincerely,
John T. Baker
NITA’s team of practicing lawyers, professors and judges from around the nation dedicates its efforts to the training and development of skilled and ethical legal advocates to improve the adversarial justice system. 
