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In his book The Art of Persuasion: Tradition and Technique, Adrian Whitfield QC observes that in 'In some universities, law courses include an introduction to classical rhetoric as a training aid. Yet in Britain young lawyers are not routinely introduced to its principles, and so far as I am aware there is no structured approach to teaching them the art of persuasion as such, that is to say to addressing the question basic to all advocacy, namely "what actually persuades other people?"'. 1 This paper offers some ruminations on the place of rhetoric in modern legal education and some reflections on the undergraduate module The Art of Advocacy: Mooting and Forensic Rhetoric which I devised and taught for the first time in 2016. 2 That module does not offer law students a 'routine introduction' or even an especially  I am grateful to my students in the first cohort of the module The Art of Advocacy for choosing to take the untested module and for making more of it than I could have hoped, and to Sean Mulcahy, a joint PhD candidate at the School of Law, Warwick University and the Centre for Theatre and Performance, Monash University, for his typically thoughtful observations on an earlier draft. 1 Published by The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple (2015). 2 Similar courses have a long history in the United States, where there has traditionally been great respect for the Classical origins of the nation's rhetorical mode of legal and political debate. Professor Michael Frost, who teaches a course on 'Law & Rhetoric' at Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles, is the author of the excellent Introduction to Classical Legal Rhetoric: A Lost Heritage (Aldershot, Ashgate 2005). The reader is also directed to Linda L. 'structured approach', but it does seek to engage law students in that perennial (and, in the legal and political context of 2016, acutely topical) question 'what actually persuades other people?' This question demands a radical response that digs down to the shared rhetorical root from which trial advocacy, political speeches and theatrical drama have all sprung. The Art of Advocacy module aims to develop law students' persuasive and ethical practices with reference to the insights of classical rhetoricians and their early modern counterparts. I am using 'ethical' in this context to refer to something that goes beyond the speaker's ethos as a feature of their persuasive appeal to include concern for the social outcomes to which the speaker is seeking to move their audience. The idea of proposing the new module was prompted by a number of considerations. First, the hope that it might urge students towards a more liberal appreciation of law's historical relation to the humanities, especially the arts of rhetoric, thereby equipping them with attitudes and skills that will not only make them better lawyers but also enhance their prospects for whatever their career plan (or lack of one) might be. Related to this was the hope that a dedicated module would enable deeper engagement with ethical aspects of advocacy...

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