Pepperdine Law Magazine

Fall 2009

Expert Advocate

Paul Zwier (JD '78) Leads the Trial Advocacy Field and Wages Peace Across the World

by Emily DiFrisco

Finishing his bachelor's degree at the end of the Vietnam War, Paul J. Zwier, like many of his contemporaries, faced difficult questions about his obligations to country and to creating peace.

"While the war ended before I was forced to make a choice, I was determined to live in a way that sought to make a difference," says Zwier, who earned his bachelor's degree from Calvin College. There, he was "inspired to look at my life's work as one of finding and living out a vocation, where my passion fit the world's greatest need."

The answer to the vocation question was law school. "I think my decision to go to law school fit my passion for being an advocate and trying to make a difference for good in the real world of disputes," he explains.

Zwier moved from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he grew up as the second of six children, to California to attend Pepperdine's law school. "The classes and professors inspired me to see not only the grays in people's behaviors and situations (and reject too-easy and simplistic solutions to problems) but also to start to see the beauty of the common law," he says of his legal education. "Pepperdine helped me see that I could have faith in common law processes. Not that they are perfect, but just the best we have. My education led me to see that the radical genius of the common law is that it balances power by giving fact-finding authority to the jury."

Zwier was involved in law school activities such as moot court and the Pepperdine Law Review. "Pepperdine's moot court program gave me confidence to speak; its Law Review gave me the discipline to write carefully, clearly, and comprehensively," he says.

After Pepperdine Zwier earned an LLM from Temple University, and as a young graduate student, he attended the National Institute of Trial Advocacy's (NITA) trial program in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. "I met some of the best trial lawyers and teachers then working in the U.S.; I was asked back the next year [in 1983] to join the faculty," he remembers. "I have been involved with NITA since then, writing problems, developing programs, and teaching trial advocacy."

Upon joining the faculty of NITA, Zwier continued to distinguish himself as a teacher and scholar of advocacy and skills training. He was professor of law and director of the lawyering skills program at University of Richmond's T. C. Williams School of Law, and professor of law and director of the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution at University of Tennessee College of Law.

Zwier is currently professor of law and director of the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution at Emory Law School, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has revolutionized the school's curriculum. Once a fledgling program, it now features advanced classes on legal advocacy in the labor and employment, medical malpractice, and criminal areas, as well as in mediation and negotiation. The program's mainstay is the Kessler-Eidson Program for Trial Techniques, which every second-year Emory law student must take. In Trial Techniques Zwier gives students intense instruction in every aspect of trial advocacy: making opening statements and closing arguments, examining witnesses, introducing evidence, and dealing with objections, in both jury and non-jury trials. Despite the challenge, many students say that Trial Techniques is the best part of their law school experience.

When he isn't training the next generation of trial lawyers, Zwier stays true to his commitment to serve the world's neediest. Through organizations such as Lawyers Without Borders and the Carter Center, Zwier has taught advocacy and rule of law for the international criminal court and for lawyers and judges in Tanzania, The Hague, Scotland, England, Hong Kong, Ireland, China, the Republic of Georgia, Ukraine, Liberia, Rwanda, Kenya, and Mexico.

"It's my passion," he says of his advocacy training around the world. "I have learned much from these experiences about the perils of rule of law development efforts, especially relating to the problem of violence against women. How can I promote human rights for women and respect the culture of the other?"

The answer is advocacy training. "Advocacy training, which involves role playing, seems to provide an important experience for the evolution of human rights in both the judiciary and in the individual advocate," he says. "What is most inspiring is to see the confidence it gives the women advocates as well as the judges as they work for human rights, not only in law-reform work, but using existing laws to call the powers that be into account."

Zwier's recent travels have taken him to Arusha to work with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and Kenya. He was part of a team of lawyers who traveled to Arusha in January 2006 to train the prosecutors in that country's ongoing genocide trials, and this past summer, he worked in Kenya, where he created case files and programming designed to specially teach Kenyan magistrates and lawyers to prosecute rape and domestic violence cases under Kenyan law.

"We also developed training materials to teach Kenyan lawyers and law professors to teach advocacy skills for themselves," Zwier explains. "Our aim is to put ourselves out of work as more and more Kenyans take over the training and material development, and as Kenyan law professors teach these skills to the next generation of Kenyan lawyers and judges."

Whether training lawyers on the other side of the globe or teaching law students in Atlanta, Georgia, Zwier inspires others to look beyond the cases. "I like to teach from the bottom up, that is, show how real-world problems raise very important moral and social issues, and that theory informs practice, but practice also informs theory," says Zwier of his teaching philosophy. "I like to create simulations drawn from real-world situations to teach lawyers and judges about practical peacemaking."