Ultra Vires
Just heard a professor pronounce it as a homophone with “virus” (i.e. “VYE-rus”), but that doesn’t seem right. My guess would be “VEE-rehs,” but I’ve never taken latin. Help?
WEE-race
(Latin 'v’s are pronounced like 'w’s)
Weenie, weedy, weenchie?
A Southern lawyer would likely pronounce it Vy-rees.
More like waynee, weedee, weekee (or at least that was how high school Latin teachers said it).
Wenny, weedy, weeky.
Lawyer Latin pronunciations are generally not very accurate.
WEE-r’s.
As this professor clearly demonstrated.*
Thanks y’all!
*You wouldn’t believe how many different pronunciations of “certiorari” I’ve heard from different lawyers.
I did take Latin and have sung in Latin, both Italian and Germanic, for decades. I’d say OOL-trah VEER-ehs.
Only Germanc Latin, or that taught in the UK. Italian-style pronounces V as V.
In Classical Latin, i.e what the ROMANS actually spoke – it’s W’s.
You’d be wrong.
Southern Lawyer Latin pronunciations are generally less accurate than that. Latin doesn’t seem to work too well with a drawl. Another example: Voir Dire rhymes with tire in my part of the world.
Apologies for the pedantry, but voir dire is French.
French is bad Latin. 
(So are the rest of the Romance languages…)
Well, yes and no. There is no single, authoritative Latin pronunciation, given the variety of Latin dialects. There’s Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, Late Latin, Medieval Latin, and Renaissance Latin, just to name a few, separated by class, time, and function, with different vocabularies and different pronunciations. As well, Latin words that have been borrowed into modern languages tend to be pronounced according to the pronunciation rules of each of those languages, as mentioned in the wiki article on Latin Spelling and Pronunciation:
The English pronunciation system for Latin is apparently derived from French pronunciations patterns of Latin, but has since been modified by developments in English pronunciation patterns generally.
So if the OP is asking how a Roman in the Classical period, using Classical Latin, would pronounce “vires”, there is an answer to that question. But there can be other, equally valid pronunciations of Latin words, sanctioned by tradition and usage.
Personally, I pronounce it much like the OP’s law prof, perhaps more of an “ies” sound in the second syllable, rather than the “us”. That’s a fairly common pronunciation in Canadian legal circles (the terms “intra vires” and “ultra vires” get a lot of work in our constitutional law).
One of the chapters of Uncommon Law by A.P. Herbert deals with this issue, with a fictional judge going on a tirade against a young barrister who’s using the resurrected Classical pronunciation of Law Latin terms, instead of the traditional Law Latin pronunciations - worth a read.
Very true. I have read, studied, and taught Latin for decades, and I can say the most worthless and pedantic arguments in the subject concern the tedious details of pronunciation.
Northern Piper is 100% right - modern legal pronunciations don’t always strictly follow the original proununciations of phrases, or the various pronunciations which have descended from them. “Voir dire” is Old French, or more specifically Law French, and is “correctly” pronounced any number of ways depending on region: vwuah dear, voy dear, voy dyer, vwah dyer, etc. Many Law French phrases and words used now are pronounced very differently than the original pronunciation, but the modern usage isn’t any more or less valid than the original.
Really, this bears repeating, on a regular basis. 