In February, Steinbrenner’s Law Team participated in their first official competition. The Law Team consists of a team of students whom make up both witnesses and lawyers whom go and compete in mock trial competitions.
The team consists of: Madison Sieckowski (senior), Lindsey Mosby (senior), Jose Ribas (senior), Shane Ali (senior), and a few others.
“We have three lawyers which include myself, Jose Ribas, and Madison Sieckowski. Madison takes care of a lot of the business regarding when we are coming together and who is exactly going where and she also takes care of reservations and things like that. Jose, myself, and the lawyer make the decisions for the team like when we are going to practice, how we’re going to do it and things regarding those aspects of the law team.” said Mosby.
Mostly, they focus on court procedures. The team practices what questions can be objected to and basically working on everybody’s different roles and that they know their witnesses like the back of their hand.
“You have to be able to run through court procedures and everything is from an actual trial, you’re in front of an actual judge and an actual jury so you have to present the case in an order that complies with legal requirements so a lot of its important.” said Ribas.
“When you go into a competition its set up like a normal court procedure would be but the jury is made up of actual real-life lawyers and they are like the judges.” said Ali.
On the team, students learn about the different aspects of court procedures and criminal cases.
“We study a case, its about cyber stalking and we have to prepare for both sides whether or not were defending the person or were on the other side with the state trying to get them in jail. So we can be on either side defending them or trying to get them in jail,” said Mosby.
With the law team being such a spur of the moment idea, the students only had a short time to learn everything they needed to know and to perfect everything as if they had the time that they did not.
“They had told us about the law team in November but we weren’t sure if we were going to come together or not and we ended up forming the team and practice started in January.” said Mosby.
Although they had a short time to practice before competing in their first tournament, they still came together as a group and dominated in their first competition, which is a mock trial.
“You go into the court room and its set up just like a regular case like you see on TV, the prosecution makes an opening statement and then the defense makes their opening statement,” said Ali.
When the team goes into competitions, the prosecution will question the witnesses, then the defense cross examines them. They go into recess, then the defense will call their witnesses, and the prosecution will cross examine.
“Because its a mock trial its set up like it’s staged since it’s for show. There’s no set verdict, the jury doesn’t go away and decide; its just set in stone so after that than the jury reconvenes and they talk about who did the best and they critique you after.” said Ali. “How you perform in the court, its not a matter of whose side won or lost its a matter of if you know when to object do you know when your court procedures are do your witnesses stick to the script can you answer follow up questions and all of that good stuff.”
“It’s honestly been such a valuable experience for me because you’ve had to stay up all night and watch videos regarding law and you have to talk to the actual lawyers and you get to meet the judges. It’s just been such a unique experience to have. It’s all about procedures, all about questioning and how you come across and a small part of it’s acting, it’s just really great and you get the opportunity to learn so much.” said Mosby.
The law team won the Hillsborough County Tournament and they are now advancing onto the State Championship which is going to be on March 17th through the 19th. If they win in States, than the next step would we to move onto Nationals.
Kayleigh Haight// Staff Writer
