Featured Faculty: James H. Seckinger
When Professor Jim Seckinger tells you how he’s spent this past spring and summer, watch out. You might get jet-lagged just listening.
Seckinger is one of the country’s leading trial advocacy instructors and the author of teaching materials used by lawyers and law students around the world to improve their trial advocacy and deposition techniques. His innovative, hands-on approach to skills training makes him a sought-after teacher and consultant.
In April, Seckinger designed and co-taught the Foundation for International Arbitration Advocacy’s inaugural workshop on international arbitration advocacy skills, held in Lausanne, Switzerland. (He is a co-founder of the organization.) In May, he traveled to Toronto, Canada to run a two-day program on questioning techniques with the Ontario Attorney General’s Civil Division. In June, he led another international arbitration skills workshop in Paris with staff from White and Case, a global law firm. Then it was back to Canada to train practicing lawyers and judges who are teaching trial skills to young lawyers. And in July, on to New York City for a deposition skills workshop with attorneys from Dewey and LeBoeuf.
There is a method to Seckinger’s mad travel schedule. When he returns to Notre Dame this fall, students in his trial advocacy and deposition classes will be the direct beneficiaries of what their professor has tested, seen, and heard in his interactions with practitioners. Seckinger will also invite distinguished legal professionals to campus as adjunct instructors, adding new ideas and methods to the knowledge pool.
“There is a very synergistic relationship between the programs for the lawyers and the programs for the law students,” explains Seckinger, who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1974 and built a national reputation for the Law School’s trial advocacy program. “Working with lawyers keeps me current.”
Students say that Seckinger also provides generous access to a vast network of colleagues that includes lawyers, judges, and legal scholars around the globe. David Gammill, a 2008 law graduate, says he landed his current job at the District Attorney’s office in Orange County, Calif., thanks partly to contacts and job experience that Seckinger helped facilitate.
“Professor Seckinger has a wealth of experience in the topics he teaches, but he is always open to others’ ideas and stresses that different approaches will work better for some situations and people than others,” says Gammill. “I cannot stress enough how much Professor Seckinger has meant to my career development and education at Notre Dame. He enjoys helping students make their dreams a reality, a quality he shares with many Notre Dame law professors.”
To learn more about James H. Seckinger, visit his faculty profile page.
