Courtesy of Sydney Smith
Lewis & Clark’s Mock Trial Team, set to become an official club this fall, has been hard at work preparing for next year’s round of tournaments and recruiting new members to add to its roster. If you have been near a campus bulletin board, bathroom stall or large tree in the past few months, you have probably seen the recruitment posters advertising the new student organization.
Mock trial is a competition where student teams prosecute, testify, and defend in thoroughly researched and realistically simulated court cases. It appeals largely to aspiring lawyers, but there are also roles to fill for the theatrically inclined, who often portray victims and witnesses. Similar to athletics, there are varsity and junior varsity teams. The LC team currently has 16 members.
Despite LC having a law school, there has not been an undergraduate mock trial club until this year. Sydney Smith ’29, the founder and president of LC’s mock trial team, described being “shocked” at the lack of a team when she arrived at LC.
“We’re so incredibly close to our law school, and we have our amazing 3-3 program for people who are definitely decided on going into law, but there’s kind of no route currently for people who are interested in just exploring the discipline,” Smith said.
To fill that void, Smith began the process of founding the LC Mock Trial Team, which included forming a student leadership board and finding a faculty advisor. Given the ambitious scope of the club — Smith’s goal is for it to become of “similar magnitude to the Speech and Debate program” — some LC faculty were wary of adding mock trial advisorship to their busy schedules. Still, Nancy Gallman, assistant professor of history, eventually agreed to take on the role.
A college-level mock trial team also needs coaches, often law students. Despite reaching out to students at the LC law school, none of them were interested in the role. To find willing volunteers from a group of busy aspiring lawyers, Smith’s outreach methods were a little unconventional.
“My boyfriend scanned Reddit for people who had either mentioned LC or had mentioned mock trial teams at LC, and found someone, on Reddit, who was just sending a random question out there: ‘is anybody interested in starting a mock trial team at LC? I’d love to coach if so.’ And so that’s how we found our first law student coach,” Smith said.
Smith, who is also on the LC Speech and Debate Team, explained the differences between mock trial and other discourse-based student organizations already in place at LC, such as Speech and Debate and Model UN.
“At my last debate tournament, I showed up in a T-shirt and some ripped-up jeans. There’s not really the importance of presentation; it’s all based on skill, which is very good… but if you want to go more directly into the profession of practicing law, mock trial gives you a much more structured exposure to that,” Smith said. “In Model UN, you’re all working on your own individual countries… for mock trial, there’s heavy, heavy, heavy importance on team cohesion. Everyone has to help out, or the entire ship sinks.”
Aariana Santos Morales ’28, a member of the team, described how mock trial connects to her job as an ASB senator.
“I’m part of the policy advisory committee, so you have to advocate for policies regarding the students and what the students want,” Santos Morales said. “I think it’s a perfect opportunity to do a little bit of practice for that in mock trial.”
Santos Morales, a political science and theater double major, was unfamiliar with mock trial before LC but was drawn to it for its appeal to both of her fields of interest. She described seeing a recruitment poster at Fir Acres Theatre and being excited about the idea of participating in mock trial.
“I was like, wow, this is perfect for me to both of my majors and everything I want to do,” Santos Morales recalled. “As an actor, I really want to experience the different roles in a case law and see how I can take this — maybe when working on a monologue, or working on a character that is a victim of some case.”
Santos Morales is also currently gaining practice law experience through her American Constitutional Law class, as well as her Law, Lawyers, and Society course, both taught by political science professor Todd Lochner.
Smith’s next major goal in her ambitious vision for the club is to become officially registered with the American Mock Trial Association, a process with a deadline coming in October. After that, she is looking forward to the Rookie Rumble, an intercollegiate online tournament that allows students to form teams across different colleges, where she hopes that LC can collaborate with the University of Oregon mock trial team.
“I think it’s an excellent ‘test-pancake’ tournament, just for people to get exposure,” Smith said. “I’m very excited to see how the club develops. I think we’re going to be able to field a very passionate and competitive team.”
For aspiring lawyers, Broadway stars, or just aspiring mock trial competitors, the LC Mock Trial Team is on Instagram at @lcmockteam where an interest form is posted, and their email is lcmockteam@gmail.com.
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