Trial advocacy professors can identify with the following lament of Andrew Marvell, a 17th-century poet:
“But at my back I always hear/Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”
The most precious commodity in a trial advocacy classroom is time—there is never enough of it. Given sufficient time and coaching opportunities, a good advocacy professor can work miracles, even with marginally-skilled students. Instead, many professors find themselves facing the Sisyphean task of trying to teach trial skills while watching an endless series of identical performances in which identical mistakes are made, despite identical critiques.