The Louis M. Brown International Client Counseling Competition 2007

The Listening Lawyer Masterclass

Tuesday 10 April, 3.15pm, MacCallum Room, Holme Building, University of Sydney

You are invited - please feel very strongly encouraged - in preparation for The Listening Lawyer, to write a fragment of a script, in which an interview occurs.

You may have up to four people appearing in this fragment. One must be a person seeking help or advice. One must be a professional adviser in the area in which help is being sought. Specify the role of this person. For example, he/she could be: a medical professional; a legal professional; a psychotherapist; a counsellor: a journalist; a minister of religion; a financial adviser.

The other one or two characters might be: a friend; a parent; a detective; or any other kind of person with a legitimate interest in interviewing the person seeking advice.

This is a consultation that has been voluntarily initiated, though of course there may be other pressures and agendas involved.

You may aim for a comic tale, a tragic tale, a cautionary tale, or any other kind of tale.

There are absolutely no correct solutions for this exercise!

The dialogue should raise some issue or issues that interest you about helpful listening.

The purpose of this playwriting is to give you a chance to think creatively about interviewing and to share some of your reflections on client counselling in an entertaining and provocative way.

The reading aloud time of your script should not exceed three minutes.