The Inaugural Yilian Advocacy Training Tournament

     
     YATT(The inaugural Yilian Advocacy Training Tournament ) is a new tournament to promote to university students the skills needed for public advocacy, and to encourage an interest in the work done by public interests lawyers in Beijing.

     The tournament began in September 2011. Different types of advocacy activities were held at partner universities and at Yilian Center. Students participated as individuals and in small teams, depending on the activity. Activities included mock trials, mock labor negotiations, debating, client interviewing and impromptu public speaking. Students could participate in Chinese or English, depending on their own goals. Students prepared each kind of advocacy activity over a few weeks and were given significant, personalized guidance from a panel of guest judges. Our judges are local and foreign experts.

     Although it is a competition, in the activities had a focus on creating a safe and encouraging environment in which students can become comfortable with public speaking and develop their persuasive argumentation skills. The activities were all based on aspects of Yilian Center’s own case work and research, but the tournament is not exclusively for law students. The tournament will be coordinated by Yilian staff and run annually after this inaugural tournament.

     We have 23 student participants from Renmin University of China, China Agricultural University, Minzu University, PKU and China Academy of Social Sciences.  We have held 4 mock trials, 4 public speaking events, 4 debates, and 4 client interviewing events. Slightly more participants have chosen to use Chinese than English. We currently have 37 guest experts willing to judge, including 4 of the experience lawyers at Yilian Center. Of these, 26 had no former affiliation with Yilian, so they are new additions building up Yilian’s network. The final competition was held on 8 April, 2012.

     The project is supported through an affiliation with Renmin University School of Law, and a grant from the Australian Youth Ambassadors’ Program assignment support funding.

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(Editor: Faith)