Mock Trial Wins
After countless hours of preparation, work and competition, the three Phillips Exeter Mock Trial teams— A, B and C— swept the top 3 rankings at the New Hampshire Mock Trial States competition the weekend of February 11. B Team took home 3rd place after an intense trial against C Team in the semi-finals; in an Exeter-only final between C Team and A Team, C Team placed 2nd and A Team was crowned the state champion.
At the States competition, uppers Bona Yoo and Michelle Park and lower Arhon Strauss earned the coveted Outstanding Attorney Award. Meanwhile, senior Bea Burack and upper Teja Vankireddy were recognized with the Outstanding Witness award. A Team will compete at Mock Trial nationals later this spring.
Preceding this triumph was the Bishop Guertin Invitational in the fall, where A team placed 1st, B team placed 2nd, and C team placed 7th.
Although virtual constraints complicated preparation for this year’s competition, the Mock Trial team pulled through. “I would say that it was definitely more challenging just because Mock Trial is a very communication-based club and is based on person to person interactions. You really can't gauge how well you are doing at your craft until you really are doing it in person,” Yoo said.
Lower Anderson Lynch commented on the differences between the courtroom and the screen. “I’m speaking on behalf of the attorneys: a large part of Mock is intimidation, and it’s much harder to intimidate witnesses over Zoom. You can no longer tower over them and you can’t walk around the room, which usually helps emphasize certain points,” Lynch said.
“In normal Mock Trial, you have physical evidence that you put on the board or bring to the witness to show the jury, but with Zoom, you can only use the screenshare feature to show the evidence,” lower Arhon Strauss said.
Making the most of the virtual platform, Mock Trial hosted “multiple Zoom meetings a week that often lasted sometimes between three to four hours,” senior Hojun Choi said.
One meeting even lasted eight hours. “That 9:00pm to 5:00am meeting was one of my favorite Mock experiences. We really only did work until 11:00pm, the rest of the night was spent talking, taking online quizzes and just messing around,” new Mock Trial member and lower Val Whitten said.
For Whitten, those meetings forged strong bonds between team members. “We left fall term complete strangers, and somehow, over Zoom, became much closer. We returned to campus a C team family,” Whitten said.
That sense of community was a defining feature of Mock Trial. “Mock Trial is a lot about who you are as a speaker, how you present yourself. It is not just about the words you say, but about the character you have. With Mock Trial, you are a team and you work together, reaching a common goal, sharing that sense of community, and achieving something bigger,” Park said.
Mock Trial advisers Jessica Dion and Lori DuBois reinforced these shared connections, Lynch noted.“Both [Dion and DuBois] do a bunch of behind the scenes work to make everything possible. Without them, we wouldn’t even be able to compete. They make the team feel like a family,” Lynch said.
“[Senior] Maggie [Wainwright] and I were in Langdell our prep year and we all joined in. It's kind of fun that we're still doing it together… but I think the best part is that everyone just gets really into it. There's still a lot of really good team bonding that happens,” Burack said.
“The social aspect of it is really kind of extraordinary. I really will carry with me the fun memories of ordering Chinese food or drawing all over the whiteboard in EPAC or doing silly skits with my fellow Mock Trial Lawyers. Those are some of my fondest memories from Exeter,” Wainwright said.
