And the Winner Is…

If Candace Parker, ’07, had to solicit students for participation in the Thurgood Marshall Mock Trial Team, the description might’ve looked like this: give up sleep for two months, live off caffeine, forget about seeing your family and friends and teach yourself the art of trial advocacy from the ground up, all while attending law school full time on the rare chance the team might actually win.

You’d think with a pitch so sobering, there wouldn’t be many takers. You’d be wrong.
After creating what she calls “the Dream Team,” Parker found herself surrounded by a group of women so determined to prove themselves that nothing, not even collective responsibilities like a part-time job, a husband and two children, a boyfriend in another state, a five-year-old, the planning of a wedding or a death in the family, could stop them from rising to the challenge.

That level of determination is similar for Heather McCollum, ’08. An interest in public health issues and a passion for advocacy prompted her to try out for the School’s Health Law Moot Court team. Armed mostly with an intense desire to hone her skills and be challenged, a win would’ve merely served as an added bonus. Lucky for McCollum and teammate Brent Sumner, ’07, it wasn’t an either-or situation. Last November, the pair was the Overall Winner of the 15th Annual National Health Law Moot Court Competition and took home the award for Best Legal Brief. Not only was it the first title for Saint Louis University School of Law students in the national competition, but it also earned McCollum and Sumner a scholarship from the American College of Legal Medicine Foundation as well as the promise of seeing their brief published in a future edition of the Journal of Legal Medicine.

McCollum credits the efforts of her advisers and teammates, which also included Katie Rose Fink and Catriona Nally, who took home a second place win for Best Legal Brief, along with “a lot of very long nights and very long days, a lot of writing and a lot of revisions,” for her eventual success.

“When you’re in a situation like this, you need to understand all of the intricacies involved before you are called to speak,” McCollum says. “The person asking you questions assumes you understand everything. They treat you as if you are a full-fledged lawyer and understand the issues involved and how they connect to other areas of law or, in our case, public policy and public health. I think that’s why this was such a great learning experience. You have to force yourself to understand the material if you want to succeed.”

Parker and her teammates, Sharonda Shahid, ’07, Latieke Sanford, ’08 and Nicole Dunn, ’07, know a thing or two about pushing the envelope when it comes to working to understand the material. “We started preparing after finals in mid-December,” says Parker, “and the competition was the end of January.” Only one person on the team had ever taken Trial Advocacy, and another teammate was taking the course while preparing for the competition. “We were putting in late hours, sometimes until Midnight, on weeknights and weekends,” recalls Dunn. “And that’s just the time we spent in preparation as a group.”

Parker says each teammate put in an equal amount of work preparing the opening statement and preparing their witnesses, who happened to be each other.
“Since we were each other’s witnesses,” she notes, “we had to prepare each other for trial. Essentially, we prepared for two trials at one time.”

That intense level of understanding is exactly what Professor Eric Miller, one of the Thurgood Marshall Mock Trial Team’s advisers, finds most beneficial about practical skills opportunities. He sees competition as a mechanism that forces students to work on their own and conduct the sort of research and development of arguments that are key to becoming good lawyers.

“The point is to move students from just recognizing the issues to structuring persuasive arguments and being able to strongly argue both sides,” he says.
For most law students, trial work is theoretical — words dotting the pages of a legal text, fictitious clients observed through the lens of a camera or the illustrations of actual cases during a class lecture. Practical opportunities such as Moot Court and Trial Advocacy serve as a complement to legal coursework, allowing students to move beyond theory and put into practice all that they’ve learned in the classroom.

School of Law students have shown great interest in these opportunities. During the 2006-2007 academic year, for example, more than 64 students competed for positions on one of the School’s nine active teams — Client Counseling (1), Moot Court (6) and Trial Advocacy (2). Though the number of students eligible for participation in a team varies, there is a selection process. This means students are essentially competing for a position on a team before they’re even in an actual competition.

Twenty-five students tried out for the Trial Advocacy Team, and only eight were selected. Of those eight, only six students participated in the regional round of the National Trial Competition (NTC) in February, sponsored by the American College of Trial Lawyers and the Texas Young Lawyers Association.

For those on the team, preparation was rigorous. The Trial Advocacy Team met an average of four times a week for two and a half hours at a time from November until the end of March. As the competition drew close, team members were putting in seven to eight hour days.

At the Regional Round of the NTC, each trial involved opening and closing statements as well as the direct and cross-examination of each of the four witnesses (each side had two witnesses). Each team competed twice and then the top eight teams advanced to the semifinals and finals. The top two teams from each of the 13 regional tournaments advanced to the championship rounds.

While students David Wilkins, ’07, John Hoelzer, ‘07 and Brent Dulle, ‘07 advanced to the semi-finals in the regional competition, the School’s team consisting of 2007 graduates Rachel Milazzo, Jennifer Slominski and Tim Grochocinski advanced to the finals and, ultimately, the championship rounds in Texas this past March. Advisers Patrick Mickey and David Bruns were proud of both teams’ progress and impressed by their hard work. “All of them came in with some raw skill or talent,” says Mickey, “but we’ve seen them evolve and come into their own — really grow into very promising future trial lawyers as a result of their time on the team.”

Team member Rachel Milazzo admits to being amazed by her own evolution.
“There wasn’t a day I didn’t go to practice that I didn’t learn something,” she says. “Whether it was how I should conduct cross examination or handle technical matters in trial, this experience definitely gave me the foundation I need to be a good trial attorney. After all, you’re a good trial attorney by practice.”

Practice. That’s what it’s all about. Testing your mettle. Learning to surpass your limitations. Working to uncover talent you may not have known you possessed. Every student who has participated in a competition shares something in common — they’ve all grown from the experience and find themselves more ready to tackle the realities waiting for them beyond the classroom. “I think we definitely know what to do in a courtroom now,” says Parker. “We’ve done a trial from the filing of charges to the final disposition of the case. I feel like you can hand me a case and I’ll do what needs to be done.”

Echoes her teammate, Shahid: “Although being in a courtroom isn’t scripted like it is when you watch a show like ‘Law and Order,’ it’s just as exciting and has the same highs and lows of a television drama. This kind of experience helps you see that. I’d recommend it to anyone.” Anyone who thinks they’re ever going to have to argue a point in their lives, that is, says McCollum. “I think it’s absolutely great practice and something you’re not going to experience in the classroom,” she adds. “There is nothing like being on the spot in front of judges who spend their lives looking at the minutia and asking people questions. There’s nothing that prepares you for the law like that.”