A few years ago I took some students into the Old Bailey to watch a sensational murder trial. Later, they delivered their verdict. They had been bored. There had been no tension, no excitement, no drama.
In particular, they had been bored by the eminent barristers' performances. Accustomed to fast-moving criminal trials on film and television, and the televised proceedings of high-profile US cases such as that of OJ Simpson, they found the real advocates most disappointing. They were right.
Barristers these days address a jury as if they were accountants explaining a balance sheet. Oratory has disappeared from the English courtroom.
I was reminded of this when reading Donald McRae's absorbing book The Old Devil, subtitled Clarence Darrow: The World's Greatest Trial Lawyer (published by Simon & Schuster). That ambitious label may well be true; certainly I cannot think of any advocate, in any country, who is more deserving.
The crucial point is that he achieved many of his successes against the odds, as the clear underdog, and usually contrary to public opinion.
He did so by sheer persuasion, backed by a powerful physical presence, a magnetic way with words and, above all, what must have been extraordinary oratorical skills, an actor's talent as much as a lawyer's.
The book concentrates on two years in Darrow's career, encompassing three of his greatest triumphs. In the 1924 trial of Leopold and Loeb, who killed a 14-year-old boy just for the thrill of it, he persuaded the judge not to pass a death sentence in what seemed had to be an open-and-shut case demanding capital punishment. Orson Welles's performance of Darrow's final speech, in the film Compulsion, is mesmerising.
Darrow went on to act for the Tennessee teacher accused of teaching his students Darwinian evolution, in what's known as the Scopes Monkey Trial (the subject of Inherit the Wind, in which he was played by Spencer Tracy). In the Sweet trial of 1926, he successfully defended members of a black family who had moved into a white area of Detroit and been terrorised by a large, violent mob of white supremacists, one of whom had been shot dead in the melee.
Edward Marshall Hall, Darrow's most spectacular English equivalent and near contemporary, was even more flamboyant and theatrical.
Crowds queued for hours to see him perform in court; newspapers covered his trials with word-for-word reports of his speeches.
He could produce his own tears when required for emotional effect. On one occasion, defending a pathetic prostitute on a charge of murder, he ended his plea to the all-male jury by pointing to her and, with a sob in his softest voice: "Look at her. God never gave her a chance. Won't you?" The jury acquitted.
Today, a barrister attempting such dramatic behaviour would be laughed out of court. To a modern jury it would appear just silly.
Gradually, the vocal and behavioural tricks have been abandoned, as have the excesses of language. Common sense, matter-of-fact and monotone have taken their place. Much more effective, no doubt. And so boring.