Mock Trial Makes Recruitment Push

The first interest meeting for Mock Trial was on October 1 during BASE in Head Coach Jason Swanson’s classroom. This meeting was for those who wanted to know more about Mock Trial and to see if they were interested in joining. There was also another interest meeting during BASE today.

Mock Trial is a competitive extracurricular activity that students participate in. Students work on a case that is given to them by the Minnesota State Bar Association (MSBA). The Minnesota Bar takes a real case and changes the details that make a case known – such as the dates, names, businesses, and more. Mock Trial helps you with public speaking and learning more about law.

Jill Sherwood ‘27, shares their experience in Mock Trial.

“Last year we had a lot of our experienced members graduate so we were low on experienced people,” Sherwood said. “I’ve been doing Mock Trial since 9th grade, and I’ve been the closing attorney every year. We’re only guaranteed 4 trials in a season, and each one is two hours straight of what we like to call debate on steroids. Each team is made up of up to 12 people, so we end up being a pretty tight-knit group. We usually have 2 teams, and V1 is able to work with and teach the newer V2 team. It’s a lot of reading through the case materials and debating each other to solidify our arguments. We also have 2 attorney coaches, who are practicing attorneys in their real lives, but they take time out of their week to teach us and help us develop our case.”

Assistant Coach Heather Eld and Swanson are the coaches for the Mock Trial. However, they both coach two different teams. Eld coaches the V2 team and Swanson coaches the V1 team. V1 has mostly people who have previously been in Mock Trial, Because of this, getting into V1 often requires an audition.

The audition is usually a made-up case like, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. A witness and a lawyer will audition with that case. The V1 team often works with the V2 team to help them get onto their feet. V2 is for those who are new to Mock Trial or have busier schedules and cannot make it to every practice. Practice is every Monday-Thursday, and there are extra work-nights that the team will plan if they need more time.

In Mock Trial, the two teams compete in four rounds of scrimmages and 4 trials against other schools teams to get to state. There are over 100 teams from more than 80 high schools that our Buffalo Mock Trial team competes with. The scrimmages are competed in other schools’ classrooms and the judge is usually someone who still coaches a Mock Trial team, used to coach a team, or was in Mock Trial. The rounds are competed in courtrooms in front of judges and a jury.