No. There's no training for people who are appointed as special advocates. You learn on the job. Most of us were all very experienced lawyers, either in the immigration field or in trial work, which I've always done. But there was no kind of training whatsoever.
The only observation I would make is that the intelligence services having to justify assessments that they made before trained lawyers was probably a very big cultural shock. There must be discussions going on, which I know nothing about, about how they can do that.
We've heard a lot of stuff about intelligence assessments being politically manipulated. Well, the opposite kind of effect took place within SIAC. The basis upon which these assessments were arrived at and whether the fact that A who had been seen at the wedding of B who had been seen at some other social function with C who was a second cousin of bin Laden proved there was a terrorist connection were the kinds of things one had to look at.