I am pretty sure I first met Emma through HHS Debate, before she was a member of Mock Trial or a student in my classes. I could have the timeline wrong, but for we certainly spent a lot of time together working on all things political, legal, and historical. She was a delight to work with especially in Trial, and when I wanted someone to give a perspective of a recent alum on the activity, it was a no-brainer to ask her.
My experience in Mock Trial taught me how to argue. Even though I had a script, six mismatched affidavits, and set lines of questioning, I found that theatrics would often make or break a case. And I’m a truly terrible actress.
Hillsborough’s strategy that sets us apart from other teams is memorization. While I was a member, our attorneys were always ready with printed copies of opening statements, direct and cross examination questions for each witness, witness statements, and closing statements before a trial, just in case we suffered from unexpected stage fright. However, we never needed them. We knew our case inside and out and could recite each scripted opening statement, question and response, and closing statement verbatim to the text from memory.
Everything we did from our first meeting to the last was completely thorough, but incredibly challenging. Members of the club had to audition and were then assigned to a role that suited them. I was a member of the club from my sophomore to senior year in high school, playing the part of a defendant my first year, and of a closing attorney for my last two. Finding suitable roles for club members was always a challenge for Mr. Fenster during my time because each case required ten roles to be filled and each year we always had nine members, so someone had to double-up; this meant one person needed to memorize all of the questions, direct and cross, and the details of the witness statement for two characters, not just one.
After roles were assigned came the task of building a case. At the beginning of the season, each school was provided with a packet by the New Jersey State Bar Foundation containing facts of the case, rules, six entirely contradictory witness testimonies, and so forth. From these materials, we determined every contradiction and crafted explanations for each issue, and built a case for both the prosecution/plaintiff and the defense. As we got a sense of our two different cases, we began to write lines of questioning. Once those were established, we rehearsed them over and over again for two or more hours every Tuesday and Thursday. The last two or three weeks before out first trial were dedicated to opening and closing statements and final run-troughs of our case.
During actual trials, having memorized everything always helped us. It made us look more put-together and professional next to other teams that relied on notes. Where we sometimes faltered was in our presentation. Memorizing the script we wrote put extra pressure on us to get it right in the trial. I was sometimes more focused on reciting my lines correctly than putting on a show to convince the judge of my case. One of the biggest criticisms I received as an attorney from one of our attorney coaches was that I was “too nice” on cross examinations and didn’t really let the witness have it. Whenever I would try to change my tone, it ended up only changing mentally, not verbally. And that would cost us. Trials-by-juries were always showcases of rhetoric and I learned the effect of that the hard way when my team would hit every word verbatim to our script, but lose a trial to louder, more dramatic team.
Even though I never won my case in my three years of Mock Trial, I saw our team get progressively better. In my first year, almost all of our team was composed of seniors. We only had three returning members, including myself, my junior year. As a result, we had to entirely rebuild the team and start from scratch. We were able to find members who were great a performing and who only got better the year after that. The performance aspect of law that I learned in Mock Trial has stuck with me. I still haven’t mastered it, but I practice it as much as I can and it pays off. Based on my experience in Mock Trial, memorization paired with theatrics is incredibly effective in arguing any issue. Knowing exactly what you’re talking about and saying it with a little bit of flair can make even the most contradictory statements convincing.
Fenster on Education 