Jane Martin was formerly a Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office. She is now a Senior Lecturer with Anglia Law School and Module Leader for Criminal Litigation and Advocacy. She sets out below how she encourages law students to take up a career in court advocacy:

You may think a Magistrates' Court advocate spends their life attending the police station bleary-eyed at two in the morning to represent a client for the usual fight, drug possession or theft followed by the inevitable court plea in mitigation desperately trying to find something positive to say for a client for whom there appears precious little to say that is positive. A little dull perhaps? Never!

"On a visit to a Magistrates Court recently I was reminded of how there is never a dull moment in Court. A defendant appeared in court following his arrest for escaping from prison. The defendant had escaped from an open prison many years previously and had been living it would appear fairly quietly with his family before discovery. His solicitor explained to the court that his daring escape had been simply to walk out of the gate of the prison to the bus stop nearby and catch a bus. Such is the stuff of being a court advocate - it is difficult to resist a smile sometimes.

"Encouraging students who could have a real flair for a working life of advocacy is an important part of my role. I use the mock courtroom to provide opportunities for my undergraduate criminal litigation students to practice making court applications in the hope some will get a taste for advocacy. This year I also taught the post-graduate Legal Practice Course students their obligatory Advocacy course, which they must pass in order to train as solicitors. In just a few weeks students have to find the confidence and their voices to give a plea in mitigation with only a brief note in front of them. I always start off the course by asking students to speak a line of Shakespeare and to keep saying it until I am happy with the volume and pace of their voice! They do think that is a strange way to start off a law course, but it works. This year all the students at both the Cambridge and Chelmsford campuses passed their Advocacy course. I hope many of them go on to be court advocates."

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