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After winning at the ABA’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition’s regional round held in Boston, one of the law school’s two moot court teams will advance to the national round in Chicago on April 7-9.

Moot Court Advisor, Professor Allison Martin, says “Our teams have been diligently preparing for this competition since last semester when the brief-writing stage first started, and have had oral argument practices at least twice per week. Due to the superior writing skills of our students, we entered the oral advocacy portion of the competition with high scores.”

The first team was comprised of Aaron Bentley, Emily Shrock and Leeann Pels. This team had one of the top ten briefs in the regional competition and went 3-0 in the preliminary rounds. Due to this excellent performance, they advanced to the knockout rounds of the tournament which were reserved for the top teams in the competition. Unfortunately, they were eliminated in the semifinals round by South Texas University. Jenai Mehra, Student Coach to the teams, says, “South Texas is notorious for being the top powerhouse in this particular tournament and in moot court competitions across the country every year. They won the National Tournament last year and are one of the four teams advancing out of the Boston Regional along with us.” Nevertheless, the first team had a praiseworthy round and only lost by 2 points.

The second team included Alex Berger, Macon Jones and Lara Langeneckert. This team went 2-1 in the preliminary rounds and fought an uphill battle against 3-0 teams to clinch one of the coveted four spots in the National Tournament, a level the law school team has not achieved in 8 years. In addition, Alex Berger was named the fifth best overall oral advocate in the competition.

Professor Martin, Faculty Advisor Professor Jim Dimitri and Jenai Mehra, and other faculty are collaborating closely with both teams to prepare them to represent our school, competing as one of the top 24 teams in the country.

Professor Dimitri says, “We have every reason to be very proud of our advocates!”