(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, by Patrick Delahanty from Louisville, United States)

Alison Lundergan Grimes and I both graduated from Rhodes College, a small liberal arts college in Memphis, TN. I have not spoken to Alison since college, so I was surprised to see her mentioned on CNN a number of weeks ago as the democratic nominee for U.S. Senator from Kentucky. Since then, she has been in the news quite a bit. She will face Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in what has turned into one of the hotter Senate races this year.    

Even in college I did not know Alison well, but we did take a public speaking class together. Alison was the type of student who was often in a suit and pearls in class, while I wore flip flops year-round and whatever wrinkled, Goodwill-purchased clothes were the most clean. She was a Chi Omega (easily the most refined group on campus), and I was a part of the football team for all four years (if there was a rowdier group on campus than the football team, it was the rugby club, which I joined because my playing time on the football team was minimal).

The public speaking class that Alison and I took together was definitely one of the most practical classes I took. Each student gave short speeches almost every day, and we were video-taped. We then watched and critiqued the videos as a class. Almost all of us had at least a few nervous habits, but we all appeared to break them after our nervous habits were seen on the screen and pointed out in front of the entire class. It was all quite embarrassing, but effective. I think there were only about a dozen of us in the class, which made this sort of personal attention possible. Our final exam was a presentation to an audience of 100 or more people, and our professor had lined up enough options for each of us, which must have taken a lot of time to organize. 

I had some opportunities to do public speaking in law school. I know those who competed in moot court and trial advocacy had even more opportunities, but I think we should try to give our students even more chances to hone their public speaking skills. Regardless of post-graduation job, almost all students will need public speaking skills, even if their audiences are small. I try to include student presentations in as many of my classes as I practically can.   

While we can all work public speaking into at least some of our classes, a required class fully dedicated to public speaking might be worthwhile. Do any law schools do this? I know public speaking is usually a part of a legal writing or litigation class, but I have not heard of a required course devoted specifically to public speaking.

Update: I should note that Alison is also legally trained. She is a graduate of American University's Washington College of Law.