Director's Message

Message from the Director 

I am thrilled and honored to welcome you to Touro Law Trial Advocacy Institute’s Resource Center. Touro University has always been a leader amongst Educational Institutions, serving not only its students, but in addition, the community in which it resides. The Trial Advocacy Institute has incorporated that role model in its goals and in the educational opportunities it provides.

We are pleased to offer our students and the legal community the ability to find resources that will assist them in preparing for trial, regardless of their level of experience. The Institute Resource Center will provide these resources in a three-pronged approach.

First: We will provide trial transcripts, videos, and articles on topics that will be useful to both the lawyer in training and the experienced attorney. Our criminal library will contain actual trial transcripts that can serve as a model of direct and cross-examinations of witnesses you can expect to use or confront in a criminal case, such as the arresting police officer, an expert witness, or a co-conspirator who has turned State’s evidence. On the civil side, we will provide the same types of useful materials, such as direct and cross-examinations of the plaintiff, defendant, and a variety of expert witnesses.

Just as we serve the community, we are always looking for assistance from attorneys in our community to help us reach our goals by contributing to our transcript bank. If you have a transcript that you think would be instructive to other attorneys, please reach out to The Institute so that we can consider its inclusion. Correspondence should be directed to lkramer@touro.edu.

Second: We will be providing training bots that will allow you to practice direct and cross-examinations as well as opening statements and closing arguments on your computer and receive feedback from the bot. While bots are not lawyers or judges, they can be a wonderful aid in trial preparation and in the development of trial skills. We will provide case files which will permit you to practice your skills in a real case setting. We have utilized the assistance of AI in creating these case files and will be developing additional files in the future for your use. We must, of course, caution you that you may not rely on comments received from bots, and their evidentiary rulings may from time to time be erroneous. Nevertheless, we believe that using this part of The Institute Resource Center to enhance your trial skills, can be another valuable tool in your legal development.

Third: We will be hosting a podcast that will explore cases of interest and provide information that you would not have known by reading the news or even attending the trials. We are fortunate to have the cooperation of some of Long Island’s most accomplished attorneys, and they will be speaking about cases in the headlines and what we would like to know about them. The podcast is intended to shed light on some difficult issues in each case, and to learn what a seasoned master attorney thinks about the cases and the trials that were conducted. These podcasts will be both educational and, hopefully, entertaining as well.

Touro Law’s Trial Advocacy Institute is pleased to welcome you to our Resource Center, and we look forward to providing you with the resources you will need to become an outstanding trial attorney.

Lynne Adair Kramer
Director, Trial Advocacy Institute
Adjunct Professor of Law