Trial team competes for top rankings
By ELLEN FITZGERALD
News Writer
The Notre Dame Law School trial teams placed first and second seed, respectively, at the Midwest regional competition on Feb. 10, and will both advance to the national competition.
This marks the first time in the region's history that the two advancing teams stemmed from the same school, and the first time a Notre Dame team has advanced this far since 1993, when Notre Dame won nationals.
The competition, sponsored by the National Association of Trial Lawyers, a section of the American Bar Association, is held regionally in 12 different locations. The top two seeds from each regional competition advance to the nationals.
Notre Dame's team, The Barristers, was composed through a series of tryouts held in September. From of these tryouts, two separate teams were formed: the Blue team, comprised of Shazzie Naseem, president of the Student Bar Association, Tamara Walker, team captain, and president of the Black Law Student Association, Ryan Redmon, and Kelly Murphy and the Gold team, comprised of Stone Grissom, Scott Kellogg, Steven Pratico, and Matt Woleski. They are coached by Wendell Walsh and Jeanne Jourdan.
The team received its fictitious case, Tracy vs. Toth, written by Judge Parker of Dallas, back in December. It began studying it over winter break, and actually returned to school a week early in order to begin formulating their arguments. The teams prepare opening and closing statements and cross-examinations. The two coaches of the teams used this time to decide which members will be the prosecution, defense or both.
Once at the regional competition, each team has the chance to argue the case up to three times, once in the preliminaries, once in the semifinals and again in the finals.
The winners are chosen by three evaluators from the legal profession. One acts as a judge and two are set up as jurors. Teams can then win by a unanimous vote of all three, or a 2-1 split. Seeding for the national competition is determined both from these votes and by a point system.
"Both teams were declared the winner by unanimous decisions and both teams were undefeated for three days of competition," said Tamara Walker, team captain.
Competition at the meet was extremely heated, as Notre Dame competed against Kent State, John Marshall and Loyola, and reigning national champions Northwestern, on their way to the regional title.
The Barristers will next be representing the Notre Dame Law School at the national competition the last week in March.
"Our region is really strong, and the people that we beat are pretty solid. We are a very trial-based school, so I think that our odds are very good," said Walker.
All News Stories for Wednesday, February 23, 2000
