Becoming a lawyer is a difficult feat, but students can join Mock Trial to ease the process or learn about how law works. Mock Trial is a team that competes in scrimmages against other schools. Teams are given cases and meet weekly to study and memorize their role in the case before performing it at the scrimmages.
Bolles has a successful Mock Trial team sponsored by Mrs. Dividu, a history teacher at Bolles, and Mr. Holland, a lawyer and a Bolles parent. Both advise and coach during practices and at the different competitions. Those being circuits that were on February 9th, where Bolles got second, and the winner moved on to states in early March.
Mrs. Dividu, a key component of Mock Trial, does a lot behind the scenes to keep it afloat. She’s always at the meetings, giving advice on witness characterization and how the characters are appearing on the stand. Along with the important job of providing dinner every Wednesday for the long meetings. Ava Mariotti says, “Mrs. Dividu and Mr. Holland are the glue that holds the team together and we love them so much!”
Students join Mock Trial for a variety of reasons, whether it’s because they had Mrs. Dividu freshman year and experienced her Gengis Khan and Martin Luther trials or just because they want to become a lawyer in the future. Mock gives students an opportunity to experience what it’s like to be a lawyer.
Mariotti, who has been doing Mock Trial for two and a half years, loves it and all the ways it has prepared her for the future. Mariotti said, “I also love the friendships I’ve formed in Mock; when you spend hours together working on cases, you form such close bonds with your team. Some of my best friends are people I’m on Mock with, and I love it for giving me the opportunity to make so many amazing connections.”
Preparing for a trial is a process that can take up to 3 months. The team usually gets the case around 2 months before the competitions. Then they spend a few Wednesdays talking through the case and coming up with “killshots.” “Killshots” are claims that if the team can prove, the case is over and done. After these preliminary meetings they hold tryouts for the different parts. For each case there’s two teams: the prosecution and the defense or the plaintiff and the defense, depending on what type of case it is.
After the sides are established, they begin preparing. They split into teams, prepare questions, prep the case, and then come together as a team to practice. As the competition gets closer, the practice schedule becomes more rigorous. Their busy season happens after winter break which means three meetings a week and going through every detail of the case.
This year they got second at circuits after working hard on both sides of the case. The Lawyers and Witnesses did an amazing job and set a great foundation for the future team.
Next year Mariotti and Max Kim will be presidents taking over current co-presidents Richa Harmani and Amber Bansal’s. Mariotti said, “I’m excited to see the team improve and get better with time – our team is still relatively new, and we have so much to learn. However, there’s so much potential and I’m excited to see what we do!”
