Budding lawyers on the Live Oak mock trial team will join 29
other schools from around Santa Clara County to practice their
legal skills in a courtroom scrimmage.
Budding lawyers on the Live Oak mock trial team will join 29 other schools from around Santa Clara County to practice their legal skills in a courtroom scrimmage.
The Santa Clara County Mock Trial Scrimmage will take place Saturday and Sunday at the Santa Clara Office of Education in San Jose.
Mock Trial is a club that mimics an actual trial with a judge, jury and attorneys for the prosecution and defense.
Each team puts on a prosecution case and a defense case, interviewing witnesses, presenting evidence and making arguments to the judge. The practice will prepare the teams for competitions between different schools in the county and the state that will take place starting in February.
In the mock trial, teams from Santa Clara County will pair off and work on their questions, technique, timing and the procedures of a trial.
Club advisor Paula Haaser said that in the past, organizers of the mock trial practice event paired students from schools in different counties so that the schools that future competitors would not get a preview of their competition.
Live Oak’s mock trial team is comprised of students from different grades, mainly juniors and seniors. Most members of this year’s mock trial team competed last year.
Wesley LaPorte, a senior who was named as the Chamber of Commerce’s 2003 student of the year, is a returning mock trial team member. Haaser invited LaPorte to join the team two years ago, and he served as a witness and a pretrial attorney in the past.
LaPorte said mock trial is a fun setting for debate.
“I am a big fan of debate,” LaPorte said. “Everything is authentic.”
He is returning as a pretrial attorney who will be arguing before a judge to either have evidence included or excluded for the main trial.
It was decided amongst the schools that it wouldn’t hurt anything to have the teams practice together.
The scrimmage was originally held at Monte Vista, until it became too big and was moved to the county offices last year. That scrimmage drew schools from as far away as Los Angeles and was quickly becoming too much for the offices to handle. As a result, the event was moved from one to two days to accommodate the large amount of students who may show up.
Four years ago, the mock trial team was formed by nine students. That number has more than tripled as and the club now boasts about 32 members.
In the past, members of the team had to play both prosecution and defense; now they have enough to have members play only one role.
Live Oak’s mock trial team has been meeting since mid-September, and has been working on their case since October.
“We have been meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays since September,” Haaser said. “We received our case in October and have worked on debate and dialogue. We’ve talked about out argument development and what the defense needs to do.”
Cases given to the mock trial teams are the same given to all schools across the nation. This year, students are tackling Price v. Casco, a case of credit card fraud.
“The case deals with fourth amendment (search and seizure) issues,” Haaser said. “It looks at drug dogs on campus.”
Haaser has a lot of confidence in this year’s experienced mock trial team because they know what kind of commitment it takes to be successful in competition. But there is still work to be done before Live Oak is ready to compete.
“I have a lot more confidence (compared to last year),” Haaser said. “Our timing is off, but we are still in good shape.”
As a part of their practice, trial members met Tuesday to run through their case.
They worked on their timing and questioning as well as court room procedure and rules.
The clock rules mock trials – all teams worry about running out of time. Everything is on the clock, including questioning witnesses. Each team presents its witnesses, and cross examines the other team’s witnesses. Because of the time limit, witnesses can form their answers to hurt the other side by beating around the bush.
The trick, according to Haaser, is to ask questions that are both admissible, and will force an answer that will yield the most information as quickly as possible.
Local attorney Ron Toff has donated his time for the second year to help the members work on the court room jargon as well as what questions to ask and which to object to.
“We really appreciate his efforts,” Haaser said. “He works on completely donated time.”
According to Haaser, the team is always looking for another local attorney to donate time.
“There are some schools that have two or three attorneys helping them,” Haaser said. “We have a parent who is an attorney who helps us, but he’s busy and it is hard to have him here by 3 p.m.”
This year Greg Berg, a history teacher at Live Oak, is also working with the mock trial team.
Haaser looks forward to the coming season and feels that the team has to potential to reach the finals.
“We are looking forward to a successful season,” Haaser said. “We have some of the brightest kids with us. I teach advanced classes and l recruit students who have great debate skills and who can think quickly on their feet. These are a fabulous group of kids.”
The Santa Clara County Mock Trial Scrimmage will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The Santa Clara County Office of Education is located on 1290 Ridder Park Dr. at Brokaw Road in San Jose.
