The Hampel Method

Advocacy is often badly taught. I speak from experience having been both the recipient of poor teaching and an observer of it. The model for bad teaching is for a student to perform an exercise (say a closing speech in a criminal trial) and the teacher then indulges in five minutes or so of waffle during which perfectly valid points are lost in a sea of randomness. It is a lazy way to teach; it leaves students learning little; and I have seen senior practitioners conducting themselves in this way.

I discovered there was a different way to teach and learn early on in my career when I went on a residential advocacy training weekend at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park. We were taught using the "Hampel method". It is very simple. The student performs an exercise and then ONE point only receives attention.

First, there is the HEADLINE - a pithy account of one thing the student was doing wrong.

Next, PLAYBACK - specific examples given of the weakness.

Next, the REASON why the weakness matters.

Next, the REMEDY: how to put it right.

The DEMONSTRATION by the trainer follows, putting the remedy into practice.

Finally, the REPLAY. The student repeats the exercise, hopefully having taken on board the teaching.

Much more to say on the method in a further post.