"You know how to open, you know how to close," Nathan said as he passed around the week's handouts. "Now for the part that comes in the middle: dealing with witnesses. Today we're going to focus on cross-examination. This is when you're questioning witnesses that were called by the other attorney. We're going with this instead of your own witnesses because your own witnesses should be like reading from a script. They should know what you're going to ask, you should know what they're going to say. If you've done your prepwork there shouldn't be any surprises here.

"Dealing with someone else's witnesses is where it gets tricky," Nathan continued. "You want to make them support your case without alienating the judge or jury in the process. One way to do that is to ask leading questions. There are examples of leading questions in your handouts.

"For today's exercise I want you to pair up," Nathan said. "Remember last week's case of Police vs. Jack Jones? We'll be using it again, only this time with cross-exam. Pair up. One of you is the lawyer, the other is the witness. Those of you playing the witness could be Jack, one of the police officers, whatever you like. It's the lawyer's job to try to get you to tell your story through leading questions. Once you've gone through it, switch roles so that you both get a shot at being the lawyer. I'm here if you have questions."

[ooc: OCD is up! Have at it!]