This year, the Lincoln Mock Trial team made it to the quarterfinals of Santa Clara County Mock Trial Competition. This is quite an achievement with such a large amount of new people joining. So in response to their success, Lion Tales wanted to interview a few of the participants and the advisers. The questions revolved around how the year went and improvements that can be made so next year will be even better.

The idea of making it to the quarterfinals managed to surprise and impress the whole Mock Trial team. It was especially great for Leilina Castillo since this was her last year of high school and her first year of Mock Trial so it was a good place to start and to leave off.

The teacher coach, Mr. Adas, was very glad to hear about it since the team won 2 of the qualifying rounds out of 4 when usually to get into the quarterfinals it takes 3 wins. This is because the team “lost by narrow margins and won by large margins,” Mr. Adas said. But the overall idea about the competition was that it went well but could have been improved with more practice during or around the time of Winter Break.

An issue that had to be dealt with since the team didn’t expect to make it to the quarterfinals was replacing people that thought that Mock Trial was over, so they planned events.  Regardless of the obstacles, the advisers are proud of the students and want them to excel in the years to come.

The attorney coach, Richard Nguyen, said that he “was happy for our students. I hope competing at quarterfinals gives them more confidence and pushes them to work harder next year.” Mr. Adas has very high hopes for Mock Trial next year, he wants the team to make it to the County finals which will take a lot of dedication.

For the students that participated in mock trial, the year went pretty well. They seemed pretty critical about their performance. One of the most common changes the students would have made involve more practice and organization around competition time.  Chau Le, the opening attorney, stated that “we were a bit unorganized around competition time so we should be more organized year round to prevent any issues from occurring.”

Along with better practices there will be a more authentic experience compared to working in the actual field of law. All the students interviewed enjoy mock trial but they don’t think it is the most accurate law experience as stated by Lika Khoperia “It’s an okay representation and its not accurate but more like a 50% kind of warm up.  But I have never been a lawyer and this is not substantial compared to a real opinion from someone in the field of law”. A few changes to how Mock Trial practices play out can make it feel more like a real experience working with the legal system.

The Mock Trial team should be proud of their success this year and hopefully their victory this year will make them want to reach greater heights next year. Along with the help of the advisers pushing them and attempting to improve Mock Trial as a whole through better management of time and a more organized recruitment process as suggested by Lika that “If there are auditions for Mock Trial then it will seem more serious or alluring to other students since we had a large amount of students this year and there might even be some competition to join.”

Mr. Adas said that “We got better though the competition. Our scoring during the quarterfinals showed a vast improvement, it shows that when students work hard they can accomplish anything, the advisers also pushed each individual every day.” Richard agreed. “The expectation for each student is: everyday you have to be better than you were yesterday. I want to see our students reach their full potential.”