It was Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024, and I was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania for my first mock trial tournament hosted by Dickinson College. I had more anxiety about this day than I had ever felt in anything related to academics. The days prior I had spent countless hours between my dorm room and the library rehearsing my content and trying to become a decent mock trial attorney. The night before leaving for the tournament, I had a breakdown on the floor and cried uncontrollably in my room. I like to pride myself on having good control over my stress and emotions, but this week I felt particularly fragile. I was terrified of embarrassing myself in a room full of my new teammates, coaches, and an opposing team and judge who were complete strangers and more experienced than I was.
My role in the first tournament was a plaintiff expert attorney. My job was to conduct a direct examination of our side’s expert witness, a doctor, and cross examine the defense’s expert witness, a psychologist. Before I knew it, I was seated at the counsel table getting ready to call my witness to the stand. As I made my way to the front of the room, my hands had pins and needles and my stomach felt uneasy. After about 10 minutes of questioning my witness, entering evidence, and battling a few tricky objections from the opposing counsel, I made my way back to my seat and took a deep breath. There were a few hiccups along the way, but by Sunday night I had made it through my first mock trial tournament without bursting into flames.
“How did I even end up here?” was a question my teammates and I often asked ourselves during our mock trial career. When I first came to Pace University as a freshman, I had dreams of working at The New York Times someday as a journalist. My first two years of college showed me that I enjoyed writing articles as a hobby, but my passion lies in the field of law. This passion initially came about after witnessing my parents represent themselves in a family dispute for six years while I was in middle school and high school. This was a formative experience that opened my eyes to the importance of legal representation. Once I realized I was interested in pursuing law, I declared my pre-law minor at Pace and started taking law related courses. I was looking for any way possible to get my foot in the door and learn more about what it means to be an attorney.
At the end of my sophomore year, I attended an interest meeting for the mock trial team. I was intimidated at first by the amount of commitment the team entailed, but I knew I wanted to come back and audition in the fall. It felt like the ideal opportunity to test out being a trial attorney and was also a chance to make friends with similar goals. At the time, I didn’t have a big friend circle at Pace and was starting to feel lonely on campus. I missed being part of a team like I was in high school when I participated in marching band, color guard, and musical theater. When I got back to campus in fall of my junior year, I had my mind set on joining the team and started to prepare for the audition. When I found out I made the team and was given an attorney role, I couldn’t wait to get started and meet everyone.
College mock trial is essentially roleplaying. Each summer, the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) releases a fictional case that every team in the AMTA circuit will prepare for throughout the year. The cases alternate every year between a criminal and civil case, and each team has to prepare a plaintiff/prosecution theory, and a defense theory to compete with at tournaments. The fall season is where teams attend invitationals as a testing ground for theories, content, and team members. In the spring, teams attend Regionals in hopes of making it to the Opening Round Championship Series (ORCS), and eventually Nationals.Â
In a trial each side will have three attorneys, each paired with a witness. First, each side will introduce themselves to the judge and ask the judge for their courtroom preferences, this is called pre-trial. Then, one attorney from each side will give an opening statement to set the scene of the case and introduce the judge to their side’s theory. After that, plaintiff/prosecution attorneys will conduct direct examinations of their own witnesses, and each witness will get cross examined by a defense attorney. After the plaintiff/prosecution rests its case in chief, then the examination process repeats with the defense’s witnesses. Throughout all of these examinations, attorneys will make objections like you see in every courtroom drama. After the defense rests its case in chief, an attorney from each side will give a closing statement to plead their case to the judge one last time. Each trial is scored by the judge, and there are opportunities to win awards as individual attorneys, witnesses, and as a whole team.
During my first year in mock trial, our team competed at three invitationals across the tri-state area, Regionals, and the ORCS in Cincinnati, Ohio. The invitationals season was when my teammates and I got close. We bonded over our mock trial stress and worked to get past the learning curve together. By our third invitational I was given an opening statement, and once Regionals and the ORCS came around I felt more confident as an attorney, but the nerves never went away.
Fast forward to this current year, where I came into mock trial as a senior at Pace, Vice President, and Co-Captain. I was excited to get back into mock trial with my friends by my side and start putting together a team of new competitors. We advertised ourselves, held auditions, got invited to tournaments, and built a new team with a new case. Things started well, but there were many hardships and changes along the way. As an E-Board, we were trying to navigate our own personal challenges, assisting competitors, working with coaches, and writing and performing our own content on top of it all.Â
The biggest lesson mock trial taught me was that no matter how Type A you are, there are just some things you can’t control, and it’s okay for things to lack structure sometimes. I have always been extremely organized, detail-oriented, and would definitely consider myself a perfectionist. In my first year of mock trial, these traits led me to spend hours memorizing every question of my cross examinations word for word using piles upon piles of flashcards. The downside to this was that I had a hard time improvising in the courtroom, because I was so focused on exactly what I had written in my script out of fear that I’d forget something important. Improvising in mock trial is a crucial skill to have, because you have no idea what the opposing team could say and may have to adapt at any moment. It was an uncomfortable realization that there were so many elements of mock trial that I couldn’t control, no matter how much I prepared. This year, I decided to ditch the flash cards to allow myself to get more comfortable with improvisation. I found that not only my scores got better, but I felt more confident and able to have fun. This confidence also pushed me to try something outside of my comfort zone, which was playing an expert witness for the prosecution. Playing an Australian medical examiner was definitely the most fun I had in mock trial, and it even won me an award at our third invitational!Â
On Feb. 28, I was back in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at Dickinson College, this time for my last mock trial tournament. It was the least anxious I had ever felt in mock trial, and I was seated next to three of my closest friends who I had met that first year. I delivered my opening statements to the fullest, had fun crossing experts, and my objections improved tremendously compared to the first time I was in Carlisle. I didn’t cry the night before the tournament, instead I reflected on everything we had been through up to this point and why it was important for us to experience mock trial one last time together, despite how burnt out we felt. I can say with confidence that mock trial confirmed my passion for law, and I look forward to being back in the courtroom someday. Finding something meaningful I want to do with my life made every tear, crashout, and stressful day worth it.Â