Any advocacy trainer in Malaysia of my vintage (circa 2011) will know the case of Abdul Rashid v Kenneth Chan (‘the Mock Case’). The facts are simple: Abdul Rashid, Plaintiff, met an accident in a Carrefour supermarket carpark which involved Kenneth Chan, Defendant. John Raj, Rashid’s neighbour was in the passenger seat. S. Ravindran, a nurse, witnessed the accident belatedly.

The Mock Case was used to teach trial advocacy, i.e., examination-in-chief (EIC) and cross-examination (XE). Re-examination is not taught because it is seen as a sub-specie of examination-in-chief. If you know the latter, you can do the former, goes the thinking. Each of those named characters were used as practice for EIC and XE.

The Mock Case was used for almost a decade before it was retired. Thankfully. It was done to death. We now use a different set of facts for our trial advocacy training. Despite the boredom and tedium that came with practising over the same set of facts for years, that experience of repeatedly watching and listening to trainees’ performance in their roles as Plaintiff or Defendant’s counsel for at least a decade yields insights not accessible from doing my usual diverse serving of work.

One of the deepest insights from such an experience was aptly summarised by a judge I chatted with during an advocacy training session a year or two back: Every time I revisit these facts, I see something new. I resonated powerfully with that in relation to the Mock Case, although mine was closer to: Occasionally, when I revisit the facts, I see something new.

That remark prompted reflection on my experience using the Mock Case for as long as I did and continue to do so. My observations from such an experience are as follows:

Firstly, very little surprises me regarding the novelty of their approach to conducting the Mock Case. After more than a decade, I have seen it all, or nearly all. I have seen the majority and minority approaches and strategies. I am so intimate with the facts that I can smell the approach taken within the first ten questions and estimate their competency within fifteen.

Secondly, I said ‘very little’ because I am very occasionally pleasantly surprised to discover a completely different approach in a training session that I did not consider before, and that is equally, if not more, effective than my idealised approach to the case.

This happens every few years. Despite such longevity and familiarity with the facts, there will always be some facet of or approach to the case that escapes my attention. Eventually, someone will eventually come along and surprise me with an effective unicornly unique approach or style, which in my hundreds of conducted performances had never witnessed before.

Sometimes, being too familiar with the facts blinds us to alternate approaches or viewpoints. Our familiarity traps us in a certain perception of the situation, making it more challenging to be objective about.

Thirdly, there is a dimension to a case that will always remain unknowable. I believe that the four quadrants of knowledge applies to everything we know and can possibly know: what we know we know (1st), what we know we don’t know (2nd), what we don’t know we know (3rd) and what we don’t know we don’t know (4th). That 4th quadrant is always present because of our human nature – we are limited beings. No matter how well we know a case, we will always miss something about it.

Fourthly, and ironically, given what I wrote earlier, the longer we stay with a case, the deeper and broader we know of it. A lawyer who spends five years with a case will see more about it than a lawyer who spends six months with it. The deeper and broader we know of it, the more nuanced the issues and options we can contemplate. The range and quality of options we can come up with directly relates to how well we know a case. How well we know a case depends on how much we immerse ourselves in it.

Productive immersion requires meaningful time, effort and attention.

Given the pace of working life and how fast we are expected to consider, advise and act, I wonder how thoroughly we can appreciate a case. Even if we can achieve that deep and broad level of thoroughness, how much can we truly impart, given the pace of working life? And from that, how much can truly absorbed by the court given its workload and responsibilities? What do we miss amidst all this speed? What gets lost in the rush? At the pace we do things, it feels as if what eventually gets litigated is an approximation of an approximation of an approximation and what is decided is a futher approximation of that.

This observation begs the question: What is an optimal period for immersion before we can say we have thoroughly grasped the plethora of possible productive approaches? I don’t know. I think it’s different for everybody. Some require little; some require more. This is a subjective question, not an objective one.

Fifthly, we cannot rely on summaries or briefings to thoroughly appreciate a case. We cannot rely vicariously on the knowledge of others. We must roll our sleeves up and dig into the source material: the notes of evidence, the exhibits, the grounds of judgment. We have to get our hands dirty. Just as no one can eat for us, no one can do the reading and thinking for us. We have to do the reading and thinking for ourselves. I know no other method to acquaint ourselves intimately with a matter.

Sixthly, at least a third of those I have trained do not prepare, do not prepare enough or treat the training lightly. There will always be one fella like that. That’s just like practice. Of course, we lawyers know the theory that we have to be prepared. But how many actually are? How many go through the motions of being prepared but are not? How many fool themselves about their level of preparedness?

Seventhly, having to teach and train others serves as an excellent reminder about the lessons I impart. Teaching and training keeps me disciplined to adhere to what I teach. Those that do not do as they teach, preach or say, are hypocrites at best and frauds at worse. So we need to teach from experience and insight, not conjecture or fantasy.

Eigthly, doing the same case over and over again breeds complacency and tedium which I fell into a for a period. I got so tired and bored with the unchanging facts of the Mock Case that I stopped reading the material like I usually did. Too much regular familiarity whittles away any interest or curiousity about it. When that happened, I felt the quality of my insight drop. Maintaining enthusiasm for the same set of facts repeatedly is a challenge after some time.

Finally, some are fortunate to be naturally better advocates than others. That’s life. We are not all born with the same gifts. Some have an uncanny instinctive feel about how to frame a question, arrange them, pace their asking and respond to them. But whether natural or not, the quality of a performance is directly related to the quality of their preparation. The better prepared advocate is likelier to be more persuasive compared to a natural but unprepared one. That, too, is life.

The biggest factor that determines how well we perform is not talent, style or intelligence. Those are important but nothing is more important than conscientious preparation.

Fortune favours the bold, but makes happy those who prepare.