ARTICLE: The Benefits of Participation in the Mock Trial Competition

Here is a LINK to my recent article in the January/February 2018 edition of The Pennsylvania Lawyer magazine entitled "The Benefits of Participation in the Mock Trial Competition."

The article touts the benefits of offering your time and expertise to this excellent program for high school students run by Young Lawyer Divisions all across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Hoping you might consider helping out the program by volunteering your time as a juror in a local mock trial competition in your county.  As noted in the article, you may be surprise by how much you can learn simply by sitting in the jury box and watching a simulated trial play out before.  Perhaps most enlightening is the fact that an effective Opening Statement and a forceful Closing Argument can be presented within the confines of a mandatory five minute time limit.

The educational benefits of participating as a juror in the mock trial program are so great that the CLE Board should consider revising its guidelines or bylaws to allow for at least one substantive credit per year per attorney for participation as a juror.  Surely, more is learned by an attorney actively participating as a mock trial juror than by passively sitting and watching a CLE video.

Participation in the mock trial program as a juror or otherwise is a great way to give back to the community and serves to mentor some of those high school students who may make up the next generation of the bar.

The local Lackawanna County Mock Trial Competition gets underway a week from today on January 30, 2018 -- please consider contacting the Bar Association to volunteer your time as a juror.