Lawyer and Courtroom Activity Packet and Worksheets

Explain what a lawyer does and name the alternative titles the passage gives - advocate, attorney, barrister, counsel, counsellor and solicitor

Distinguish the two sides of a case, naming the prosecutor and the defence attorney and saying what each argues

Describe who is in a courtroom and what each does, including the judge, the jury of twelve and the witnesses

Explain the meaning of common legal idioms and use at least three of them correctly inside a short story

Identify people who shaped legal history, from Arabella Mansfield as the first female lawyer in the United States to Thurgood Marshall as the first African-American on the Supreme Court

Page 1 asks that printing start at page 2, which keeps the credits and contact page out of a class set

The two reading responses work differently: the first asks students to mark up the passage itself with circles, boxes, underlines and a squiggly cloud, so keep that passage in front of them rather than collecting it in

The idiom list on page 7 and the writing prompt on page 8 are a natural pair, and the prompt sets a floor of three expressions, which makes it easy to raise for stronger writers

Difficulty is spread widely across the packet - the tracing and dot-to-dot pages sit well below the reading passages and the famous-lawyers profiles - so pick pages by task rather than working through in order

The secret code decodes to the courtroom oath, which pairs well with the "tell the truth, the whole truth" entry on the idiom list and the tracing page's "tell the truth" line

The famous-lawyers page is written in the present tense for people who have since died, so check those entries against a current source before handing the page out

Reading for specific terms - the first response sheet asks students to circle, box, underline and cloud named items inside the passage rather than answer in their own words.

Legal and courtroom vocabulary - attorney, counsel, jury, motion, witness and innocent appear across the word search, the word-part matching page and the tracing sheet.

Understanding idioms - twelve expressions are each glossed on the Lawyer Language page, and the writing prompt requires at least three to be used correctly in a story.

Word building - the Lawyer Words page joins parts such as court + room, guil + ty and inno + cent, so students assemble the term before writing it out.

Writing from a role - the Draw and Write page and the Lawyer Application form both ask students to answer as a would-be lawyer, saying what they would do and who they would help.