DLA Weblog

Mock Trial Society's 02-03 Season

The following was recently posted in the DLA Community Forum by Tina Catania '03, of the Dartmouth Mock Trial Society, and I wanted to share it in this venue as well.

Tina says:

Hello all!

I am writing to you on behalf of the Dartmouth Mock Trial Society. As we come to the end of our Fall term here at Dartmouth, we wanted to share with you our progress and accomplishments. However, first let me express, on behalf of the officer board and the society membership, our appreciation for your generous support. With the help of the Dartmouth Lawyers' Association, we have been able to start another exciting season, and we are hoping to grow and expand the reach of our society throughout the year.

(Read more ... )

We began the term by hosting the first ever Dartmouth Mock Trial Youth Conference held at Dartmouth for middle and high school students in New Hampshire. The event was co-sponsored by the Franklin Pierce Law Center's Social Justice program, and thanks largely to the work of the conference committee, chaired by Sean Miller '05, the event was a huge success. Over 60 students convened at Dartmouth on Sunday, Nov. 9th and the comments by all the participants and coaches were remarkably positive. This was the first time that an event of this sort was held in New Hampshire, and through a variety of workshops and seminars, we were able to share our skills and knowledge with the great group of kids that attended.

Experienced members of our society spent daysbefore the conference preparing worksheets and planning hour-long workshops that the students attended throughout the day. The workshops included Direct Examination, Cross Examination, Evidence, Speeches, and Witness Portrayal. Each workshop was co-taught by a pair of veterans on the team, and they used various videos, skits, and lecture-style presentations to teach the different tricks of the trade. Everyone put extraordinary amounts of work into making their handouts and planning their workshops.

The instructors were as follows:

Speeches - Gwen Carroll '04 and Stacy Kourlis '06
Evidence - Evan Mendelson '06 and Brian Pingree '04
Witnesses - Michael Ellis '06 and Alexa Hansen '04
Direct - Tina Catania '03 and Jeremy Presser '04
Cross - Dan Preysman '04 and Megan Hamilton '06

Special highlights include videos of various Dartmouth mock trial team members performing speeches that students watched and were able to critique. In addition, we showed various famous closings on film to help students learn. In the witness workshop, students worked on extemporaneous speaking and the tools necessary for being an outstanding witness. And in the evidence workshop, we showed clips from a past mock trial championship competition and had students identify objections as they went through the video.

Everything ran incredibly smoothly thanks in large part to an amazing team of people who planned and executed the camp. We appreciate the help and support of Sara Hudson '05 and Ali Amrhein '06 for their organization, and Colleen Wearn '06, Jed Sorokin-Altmann '05, Gwen Carroll '04, and Megan Hamilton '06, for extensive work beforehand.

In other, non-conference news, we had a great group of freshmen try out for the team this year and are looking forward to seeing this new talent shine at next term's Regional competitions. We had about 15 first-years come with us to the Yale tournament and everything went wonderfully. We will be posting a separate press release on this topic in the coming week for those that are interested.

On a final note, I invite you to visit our website to learn more about the mock trial conference, other events, and the society as a whole.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~mtrial/

Thank you again for all your support and we will update you soon on our success at the Yale Invitational Tournament held this past weekend.

Tina Catania '03
Treasurer,
Dartmouth Mock Trial Society