Mock trial is "all about working as a team," said fourth-year College student Steven Blau, a member of the University's Mock Trial team. "This is an activity we love to do, and we get to work with people we love to be around."
Mock Trial draws students with interests ranging from law to drama and public speaking, demanding that participants play roles of witnesses and lawyers in what amounts to a combination of performance and trial.
Teamwork has paid off: The Mock Trial team, now in its eighth year at the University, is celebrating the most successful season in its short history.
This season, the team announced the University's arrival as a national powerhouse in the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) circuit.
After the first two invitational tournaments during the fall semester, the team held the number-one ranking in the nation for several weeks. By the end of the season, at the national tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, the team came within one point of its first national championship. Second-year College student Daniel Young and third-year College student Samantha Bateman took away honors as all-American attorneys.
The AMTA runs tournaments in accordance with Federal Rules of Evidence. Team members compete for both school and individual honors. At smaller tournaments, mock trial team coaches and lawyers act as judges. More prestigious tournaments attract lawyers and actual trial judges.
Fourth-year College student Lauren Park, who is president of the team, described the commitment that underlies the team's success.
"The people I worked with this year are the most talented I've ever met," Park said.
A member of the team since her first year, and president since her second, Park said the program has changed significantly over the course of her University career.
"It's night and day," she said.
Three years ago, the Mock Trial team competed only in regional tournaments. It did not travel to the invitational tournaments where the team made its mark this year.
Third-year College student Ben Sachs now calls it "the premiere pre-law activity at the University."
The AMTA provides a case scenario at the beginning of each year which lays out character sketches and the basic details of the case.
"It's fairly well-scripted, but you have a lot of liberty to improvise," said Blau, who played roles as a general practitioner and a clinical psychiatrist over the course of the year.
Playing the role of Dr. Jules Siegfried, Blau did research in the medical field and worked with team members to cultivate a role that he enjoyed playing.
"It's really about finding a character and embodying him," he said.
Other team members act as lawyers who question their teammates and cross-examine the witnesses of other teams.
The competition rules and scoring procedures are complex, but team members emphasized the activity's ability to engross them.
"It's so easy to get sucked in," Sachs said, and team members agreed the activity is "addictive."
The team members attributed their close friendships to the amount of time they spend together -- practicing for six hours a day the week before tournaments.
They rehearse every detail, sometimes spending a great deal of time, for example, perfecting the way a witness takes off his or her reading glasses.
"But you couldn't have it any other way," Sachs said. "If we didn't like each other, we wouldn't be able to put so much time into this."
The team is serious about competitions.
"When you're at the tournaments, it's all mock trial," third-year College student Lauren Charneski said. "Your entire weekend is taken over by it."
Blau added, however, that it is also "a tremendous amount of fun -- I never laugh as much as when I'm with this group of people."
Members recalled one particularly humorous moment during a trial in which second-year College student and star witness Mostafa Abdelkarim got a federal judge to laugh.
"You have to understand that kind of thing just doesn't happen, and yet Moose had him laughing hysterically," Sachs said.
According to AMTA rules, teams compete in different regions throughout the country. Invitational tournaments are followed by regional competitions in which schools bid for spots at nationals.
The University's rivals within the region include The University of Maryland and Howard University, among others.
Last year "we would have said [our biggest rival was] Yale, but we beat them this year, and they were really nice about it," Sachs said.
"They took it well in the end," Blau added, laughing.
Despite their successes, the team members remain humble about their awards and are confident their achievements speak for themselves.
"We surprised a lot of people this year," Carneski said of the successful Silver Flight team. The Silver Flight team, which is one of the two nationally competitive teams fielded by the University, had four first-year students and only two returning members.
"The fact that our team did so well speaks to the determination of the four new members," Carneski said.
It also speaks to the future of the Mock Trial team.
In the off-season, the team will work to raise funds for the coming year. It will appeal to local law firms as well as traditional sources of funding for CIOs.
"The problem is that there aren't a lot of alumni in the business here," Park said.
According to Park, several other teams receive a majority of their funding from law firm sponsors.
She also cited the difficulties associated with the necessity of using Law students as coaches for the team.
"We've been really blessed to have [Law student] Daniel Shapiro to coach us," Park said. "But Law students are only here for three years. To get a stable coach would be a big step for the team."
Park said recruiting new members and training them is one of the most important tasks facing the team in the coming year.
"Mock Trial can appeal to pre-law people, drama people, people who did forensics in high school, debators," Bateman said. "There's a wide range of people who will find this worthwhile."
After this successful season, the team hopes it will see a rise in popularity and publicity.
Park is optimistic for the future of the team.
"I would love to watch them win nationals," she said. "They're like a family and I'll definitely keep in touch with them"
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