High school Mock Trial offers students an approach to learning about law and legal system functions in Ohio by allowing students to gain experience in the courtroom.

Mock Trial teams are overseen by a teacher from the team’s high school and volunteer legal advisers. All high school Mock Trial teams have the same objectives: improve critical thinking, reading, writing, public speaking, listening skills, de­velop un­der­stand­ing and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the law, court pro­ce­dures, the ju­di­cial sys­tem, un­der­stand con­sti­tu­tional rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and rec­og­nize and re­ward stu­dents’ aca­d­e­mic and in­tel­lec­tual achieve­ments.

Every year a case is sent to the different teams across Ohio. Revere High school Mock Trial team adviser Ellen Friery has been the adviser for about thirteen years. She explained what a case includes and described the 2016-2017 case.

“A case is over 200 pages of legal documents: legal briefs, witness statements, and case law. This year, the case was a first amendment freedom of speech/freedom of the press and defamation case. A sitting governor lost a reelection bid due to a story released on a prominent news organization that turned out to be false and was later retracted. The story said the Governor had killed a high school principal after a heated argument. Autopsy showed the principal died of a brain aneurysm,” Friery said.

Senior Danielle Kakish has been in Mock Trial for four years. She explained what happens at the trial for the given case.

“At the trial, two teams from different schools will play the defense and plaintiff and present their case in front of the judges. Students are rated on their performance throughout the trial. Whoever provides the most compelling argument and performs the best wins the trial,” Kakish said.

Before the trial the team has time to prep. They assign roles to different members such as attorney, witness or defendant. Kakish was assigned the role of a plaintiff attorney. Senior Jake Kahoe was assigned to be a plaintiff witness. Kahoe has also been in Mock Trial for three years and explained some of the roles.

“As a lawyer you lay out the case in your favor in detail. Going into the case, the judges know nothing so you must really explain it. As a witness, you just answer questions from the lawyer and then from the opposing teams lawyer,” Kahoe said.

This year’s team competed at the district level on January 20 against Hudson. All Revere’s plaintiff sides argued in Summit County court, these arguments consist of two hour trials in real courtrooms. After lunch both teams came back in the afternoon and argued the defense side in two hour trials. Summit County judges and attorneys in panels of three volunteer to “judge” each competition. Revere fell to Hudson, and will resume competition preparation next fall.