Plans? What Plans?

This is part four in a series about the WIHS Mock Trial team. Please click here for part 1, part 2, and part 3. 

So it turns out that our plans went out the window pretty rapidly, as usual, this year. 

Throughout the preseason, students slowly started dropping off the team, one by one.  Absenteeism meant that we had to repeat lessons many times and our neatly laid out plans were soon left in shambles.  By the start of 2010, we were back down to our minimum of eight students once again with one backup player who couldn’t attend practices because she recently started a new a job.  We had barely covered the material we wanted to cover.

 Although the team of eight was committed and determined, it was rare that the entire team was ever at practice together at the same time.  Train delays, family obligations, sicknesses, and a host of other problems prevented the the team from having a practice where the all the players were in attendance until a few days before the first competition. Often times, students would not call to say they weren't coming to practice, which infuriated all the coaches. I had to constantly remind myself that even with all their real world experience and problems, the students are children.  They are still learning what it means to be responsible. 

The dwindling numbers and absenteeism sparked many conversations among the coaches about disbanding the team.  We all had a lot on our plates, and we were unsure if the time would be worth it.  We didn’t want another season of logging hundreds of combined hours to the program without seeing the students progress past round two. 

It wasn't just the students though--the coaches also had a lot of problems getting to the practices.  The demands of being an attorney at a top law firm are substantial.  It requires long and unpredictable hours.  This hindered all of the coaches’ abilities to come to practice on time (or at all).  Personally, I also had a lot of trouble attending all of the practices. I was in the middle of making arrangements for my dad to move out of a nursing home and back into the community, so I had to do a lot of running back and forth between New York City and Hartford.  Every Wednesday and Friday emails circulated between the coaches to piece together our schedules and to make sure at least one adult would be in the room at all times. 

 In this way, the students and coaches are similar.  Both groups have chaotic and unpredictable lives.  As much both sides would hate to admit it, I think this dynamic created some understanding between both sides about demands on time and the priority that Mock Trial plays in a student and coach’s life.  It was a huge priority, but many things took precedence over practice.

Still, most students on the team had at least a year of experience to help them through the season.  This experience would prove to be invaluable to them in first few months of 2011.

Recruiting

This is part 3 in a series about the WIHS Mock Trial Team. Please click for Part 1 and Part 2

Of course, all of our planning at the beginning of the season would be for naught without a team.  Therefore, the coaches also spend time recruiting students to participate in Mock Trial.  Some coaches go to WIHS and speak to classes about the club. I speak to teachers about recruiting their most dedicated students. I also set up a table for Mock Trial at the afterschool activities fair.  We encourage returning students to recruit their friends.  We try to think of every avenue possible to get more students involved.

According to the rules of the New York State Bar Association, there needs to be at least eight students to field a team.  Ideally, a team should have twelve to fifteen players.  There are a total of twelve parts that can be played: there are three lawyers and three witnesses on both the plaintiff and defense side ((3+3)*2=12).  If there are twelve players on a team, each person has only one role to play.  Any additional students serve as backup players.  On a competition day, six students are needed to play--only one side performs at a time.

We were all relieved when fifteen students showed up the first day of practice.  We have trouble retaining students from season to season, and there is usually a large dropout rate throughout the course of the season.  Last year, we had a student drop off the team only days before the first round of competition (via Facebook message, no less), reducing our number to seven.  We scrambled to find a warm body to fill his role so that the months of practice would not go to waste for the rest of the team.  The coaches ended up practicing with the new student the entire weekend before the competition, staying with her until almost midnight on a Sunday night to prepare her.  We did not want any repeats of that this season. The fifteen faces in the room made everyone optimistic. 

Students are not the only people we need to run a mock trial program, though.  We always need coaches, and they are not easy to find.  With every year attorneys stay at the firm, they are saddled with more work and have less time for volunteering.  I have seen this happen time and time again with my volunteers.  People volunteer a lot during their first year, and less during their second and third years.  I rarely have anyone beyond a fourth year turn up for my programs. 

This year, we got lucky.  We got a new coach.  Yana and Manoj were on their way home from Cleary one night and discussing Mock Trial during their car ride.  The students had just completed a homework assignment. Yana wanted to talk about it, Manoj didn’t.  This was pretty typical of interactions between Yana and Manoj.  Luckily for them, they were sharing the car with a first year associate named Leza.  When Leza heard Yana and Manoj talking about Mock Trial, she mentioned that she had participated in mock trial in high school.  Attacking her from both sides, Yana and Manoj pitched the nearly impossible sell of volunteering for Mock Trial to Leza.  By the end of the car ride, Leza was the newest coach of the Mock Trial team. 

Leza certainly didn’t know what she was getting into when she agreed to be a coach.  If she did, she would not have agreed to take on the responsibility.  Luckily for us, she did, and I’m fairly certain she is happy about that decision now.   It’s nearly impossible for me to sell mock trial to my volunteers.  Telling most attorneys at Cleary that they’ll have to commit to volunteering about 10-15 hours a week and they’ll run as fast as they can in the other direction. The attorneys at Cleary already have a ridiculous amount of work on their plates.  Mock Trial is by far the largest time commitment a volunteer can take on in any of the programs that I run at Cleary.  But—once you’re hooked, it’s hard to back out of the commitment.  The coaches of the Mock Trial team become attached to the students.  It turns out to be an extremely rewarding experience, but at a high cost.

With all of this in order, the coaches were optimistic about the year.  We had our students, we had our coaches, and we had a plan.  It was just a matter of holding it all together—and maybe we could actually do it this time.

Our Best Laid Plans

This is the second post in a series about the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial team. Please click here to see the first post.

Each season begins with the coaches.  Before students return to school, the coaches begin to plan the mock trial season.

When the coaches meet for the first time, they first discuss the need to recruit more coaches.  Then they discuss the need to recruit more students. The program would not be able to exist without people, after all.  More on this later.

There are several Mock Trial coaches:  Yana and Manoj are both third year associates, and both started coaching the team together when they started at Cleary.  Shiwon is a fifth year associate who also started coaching when he first joined Cleary.  Leza is a first year associate.  I also coach the team. I am the only non-lawyer, and have coached for four years.

Before the coaches meet with students for the first time, we discuss what we will do differently to improve upon the year before. At this meeting, we write out a list of topics we feel are necessary to teach the students, and determine the dates we will teach each topic.  The coaches then make lesson plans for each of these topics.  The lessons we planned to teach this year were the rules of evidence, objections (and responses to objections), opening and closing statements, and direct and cross examinations.  We also chose a practice case for the students to prepare for during the preseason.

Once we have our game plan, we start meeting with the students.  Our preseason starts in the beginning of November.  This is when the coaches start to teach the planned lessons, and this is when the students start preparing for their practice trial. Practices are held every Wednesday and Friday from 3:00 to 6:00 PM during the preseason.

Our regular season begins each December after Manoj and I visit the New York State Bar Association to receive the new case. This is always a highly anticipated moment, and especially so this year.  Last year’s case on securities fraud elicited several rounds of angry emails between the coaches, and generated general frustration throughout the year.

Shiwon: "Can you believe they have to learn about pyramid schemes?"

Manoj: "Not just pyramid schemes, they have to learn about trade derivatives.'

Yana: "Why can't we just have a plain old murder case?"

To our relief, this year's case was about a parking ban (Click here to see the NYSBA case). While it would require the students to learn about civics and Constitutional Law (something we would struggle with throughout the season), we were relieved that we would not need to teach them the intricacies of the financial meltdown of 2008, precipitated by Bernie Madoff (or “Bernie Madlock” in the Mock Trial case).  We also thought the subject matter would be a bit dry and irrelevant to city kids. Our students don’t drive—they take the subway.

Once we receive the new case, the preseason ends, and we start preparing the team for the competition.  In January, February and March, the team meets each Saturday from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM, in addition to the two other practices each week.

Historically, the WIHS season ends in early March after the second round of competition.  As you've likely surmised, our season did not end in March this year.

Click Here for Part 3

The Little Team that Could

This is the first post in a series about the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial Team

"I don't think you understand.  We goin' to Albany."

Geannie must have said this one hundred times over the past four months.  She is one of the newest members of the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial team, and was full of idealism and hope throughout the 2010 Mock Trial season.

Washington Irving High School is an overcrowded and persistently failing school with a chronic attendance problem located near Union Square in Manhattan. Over the past five years the graduation rate averaged out to around 36%, and the majority of students qualify for free lunch.  Each day, students must walk through metal detectors before heading to their classes for the day.  Currently, the school is on the Department of Education's list to be either closed or "radically changed" because of its dismal performance record.  Of the students who graduate, most will go on to the City University system, whose schools do not have a great graduation rate either. To put it plainly--the cards are stacked against the students who attend WIHS.

Still, there are glimmers of hope. There is a new and enthusiastic principal at the school, and there are several businesses and individuals in the surrounding community that are invested Washington Irving's success.  Cleary Gottlieb has been one of those entities since 1991.  In recent years, a small handful of students have been accepted into elite universities across the country and have started to inspire their younger classmates.  In 2010, the graduation rate jumped to 55%.  In the last two years, the school has received a C on its progress report after years of receiving Fs.  Still, even on the "C" report cards, the section that evaluates student performance is still an F.  Less than 2.7% of high schools city-wide received the same score on their student performance criteria.

Every year, lawyer coaches at Cleary Gottlieb have spent countless hours preparing the WIHS Mock Trial team.  The team competes in a city-wide competition sponsored by the New York State Bar Association.  There are eight rounds of competition throughout the five boroughs of New York City.  Private, parochial and public schools all compete in the tournament.  Every school competes in the first two rounds.  The top 17-64 schools from those rounds will compete in the third round.  The top 16 schools go directly to round four.

After the first two rounds, the tournament becomes a single elimination competition--if you lose, you're out.  The winner of the city-wide tournament travels to Albany to compete at the statewide competition. Despite several years of late hours and constant coaching by Cleary attorneys, Irving's team never made it past the second round of the competition.  They usually lost one round, and won a round, and didn't have enough combined points to push them into the third round.  Until this year.

Click Here to go to Part 2