Lower Merion mock trial team starts off its season with a great start, winning both court cases against The Baldwin School and LaSalle College High School at their February 9th competition at the Montgomery County Courthouse.
“The judges were very impressed,” said junior Erika Bar- David. “Both sides of our team did exceptionally well.”
The club’s aim is to realistically mimic court cases, and it attracts students with a wide variety of aspirations. And while some see themselves having a future in law, others do not.
Photo courtesy of Joyce Acton
“I became involved sophomore year when I was just looking for some new club to be involved in the winter,” said senior Rachel Cohen, Mock Trial’s president. “A big misconception about the club is that it’s for kids who want to be lawyers. While, sure, it could help if that’s your per¬sonal ambition, it’s definitely not about that.”
One of the great attractions of the club is its effective creation of a social, team-oriented activity rooted in academics.
“It has all of the great things about being an academic club, but at the same time we really get a feeling of camaraderie on the team,” said senior Jacob Adenbaum. “We’re all friends.”
“Our team has a lot of chemistry,” said Cohen. “We have fun together.”
In the club, students participate in a yearly state¬wide competition in which the Young Lawyers Divi¬sion of the Pennsylvania Bar Association distributes a specific court case to high schools across the state. This year’s case centers around the hypothetical murder of Ophile Sarat.
“In October, we get a copy of the case materials,” said Adenbaum. “We spend the next few months preparing a case.”
Then, around February or March, the club goes to the Montgomery County Courthouse to act out the case in front of professional judges and a jury comprised of volunteer lawyers.
“You really need to work together,” said Cohen. “You get scored by the jury on the team performance as a whole.”
Before and at the competition, the club is broken up into two groups: the prosecution and the defense. At the event, each group competes against another group from another school and is judged based on its performance. Both the prosecution and the defense had strong performances at their first competition this year, winning their trials.
“We won by a rather large margin,” said Adenbaum. “Our scores for the prosecution team were some of the highest in the county.”
The team’s high scores at its first set of trials mean that it will move up to the next round of competition. The team has yet to find out when the next competition will be.
“As for the future… we’re hoping to win the county this year and move on to states,” said Adenbaum. “As of right now, our prospects are looking good.”
Eric Cohn
Class of 2012
