John Champe’s Mock Trial team is going to states this weekend and will be in Richmond this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The team has been dedicatedly preparing for this competition since the beginning of the year when they received this case. The members are divided into attorneys and witnesses. The attorneys are further divided into defense attorneys and plaintiff attorneys. To prepare, they have been conducting practice trials periodically to improve both the witnesses’ stories and the attorneys’ public speaking skills. Recently, in February, the Mock Trial Team placed third in the region and they’re confident they have improved their case further since then.
“This is my first year in Mock Trial and my first time competing at this level,” Mock Trial Member Rishi Parekh said. “So far, I’m enjoying it a lot.”
This is also only the club’s second year competing and members are proud of how far they have gotten. Clubs allow students to better explore their interests and gives them a lot of experience in the field they plan on pursuing. They also give them opportunities to improve important skills such as public speaking and leadership. This especially applies to Mock Trial where members closely replicate a real court setting by using jargon and ideas used by real attorneys.
