All Rise

It’s obviously been a busy, busy week, when I haven’t had time to post to the blog. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you’re doing things that matter. But it seems like this week has been nothing but a series of small annoyances that you can’t ignore. Taking care of these things doesn’t give you any sense of accomplishment. You can’t even see any difference in your surroundings like you do if you clean out your closet or organize your CD collection or whatever. So I spent the last week doing things like filling out yet another copy of my financial aid paperwork (which the financial aid office can’t seem to keep in its files for more than 60 seconds straight), mending some items for Finbar, cleaning out a box of papers, etc, etc.

The one thing I did that was acutally really cool was that I was the bailiff in the first round of mock court eliminations. I originally signed up just for a chance to do something extracurricular and to get a peek at what the mock court is like. I was actually kind of dreading it by the time Wednesday rolled around. It involved coming back in to school in the evening (which is never a good thing) and was scheduled to last three hours (which seemed like a pretty long time to listen to anything at law school). But I am nothing if not a woman of my word, so I dragged myself into school at 5:30 pm.

The meeting time for the students involved was 6 pm. At 5:30, the lounge was filled with students wearing suits and ties who were running over notes and tweaking lines of questioning. Occasionally one student-attorney would run up to another student-witness and make a breathless declaration like “They’re going to ask you about the exam you performed at the hospital and whether a knee could pop out later. Don’t speculate! Just tell them that the knee presented at normal!”. At 6 pm, there was a mass exodus to the first floor meeting point, where the same suited and tied students milled around with nervous bravado, acting as though they go to court every single day and this is nothing, nothing to be nervous about for them.

A few local attorneys, presumably alums of Our Law School, had volunteered to act as judges for the competetion. The other bailiff and I sat in a small side room with them, waiting for the last minute preparations to be finished. Two of the judges were quite young, possibly even younger than I. I promptly nicknamed them Judge Red (‘cause he has red hair) and Judge Hottie (‘cause, well...). The third judge looked like he might have been in his late forties. He didn’t really interact with the other judges or with us, so I didn’t get the chance to assign him a cute nickname. There was much laughing and joking about the cost of attendance at Our Law School, which has skyrocketed in the last few years— coincidentally at the same time as the school made the big push and broke into the first tier—and the strange spending priorities evidenced by the renovations to the library and the addition of several flat screen TVs (which are used to display a daily calendar of event and the current weather condition and are another rant altogether) to the public areas of the school, while the elevators are falling apart and the wiring doesn’t allow you to turn on two microwave ovens at once in the kitchen area.

Anyway, Judge Red and Judge Hottie seemed like nice guys—very funny and not at all arrogant (unlike many other young attorneys who are still busy trying to establish their place in the pack). My theory is that this is because they both work for very, very small firms where they don’t have to scrabble to be noticed and where they have been given heavy responsibilities from Day One. Judge Hottie was especially attentive to me—in fact, it might be said that he was flirting with me quite heavily. Scoring sheets were handed out to the judges, timing sheets and time cards were handed out to the bailiffs, and the basic rules of procedure were explained to us. Judge Red asked Judge Oldie (see, I just came up with a nickname for him; I just needed a chance to interact with him – or in this case, his memory—to come up with one) if he had any tips for judging a competetion. Judge Oldie promptly replied, “Overrule everything”. Nervous laughter from all involved. Judge Oldie continued, “Overrule every objection just on principle. Give the opposing counsel the chance to respond and explain why it should be admitted. Then overrule it anyway, unless the issue is really obvious. That will give them the most practice at objecting, responding to objections, and contending with loss of evidence or admission of unfavorable evidence.” He chuckled. “I once had a student send a “Notice of Appeal” to my office the next morning.”

That’s beautiful. Can you imagine having the sack to do that? Personally, I would offer that student a job on the spot. Well, that might be a little overboard. But it should be rewarded somehow!

The organizer came back to the room and assigned one judge to each room. Then she asked if I had a preference about which room to bailiff in. Judge Hottie piped up, “Oh, are you going to bailiff with me?” Do you see my eyes rolling back in my head? The organizer says, “Sure, why not? You two go to Room 1. Good luck!”

Room 1 was right outside the “Judges Chambers”. Judge Hottie wanted to know how the room was set up and where he was supposed to sit. The he wanted to know how I thought he should run things. Then he wanted to know if he needed to hear pre-trial motions. Good Lord, man! It’s the first round! Relax! Is there a spot on the sheet for pre-trial motions? No? Then you don’t need to hear them! Or go ahead, if you like, but they won’t make any difference. It wouldn’t make any sense to even have this competition if you could just prevail on a motion for summary judgment, now would it?

I walked in to the room and was really quite relieved to see that none of the students involved were people that I know personally. I know I wouldn’t want to have my first presentation be in front of someone I know, especially someone who I’m not close friends with. I’m sure others would feel the same way. I explained the time limits and the rules for re-direct and answered a few questions about the procedure for the evening. Then I walked up the aisle to the place we’d designated as the bailiff’s seat during our hallway conversation and began my big bailiff’s speech:

“All rise.” And they did, which made me want to giggle for some reason. “Court is now in session in the county of Allegheny, the honorable Judge...” uh, what the heck is Judge Hottie’s name? “The honorable Judge Hottie presiding” probably wouldn’t go over too well. Oh jeez, you’d think I would have had the brains to introduce myself at some point. Where are my manners? And if I couldn’t be polite, I should have at least had the brains to ask his name for this exact purpose!!

“Dan Stevenson" Judge Hottie to the rescue! I finished my speech, Judge Hottie ordered us to be seated and asked if there were any pre-trial motions. Someone made a motion to exclude some testimony or something like that, Judge Hottie overruled it, and opening arguments began.

There were four student attorneys involved, two on each side. On the Plaintiff's side were two women I didn't recognize at all. On the Defendant's side were a man I vaguely recognized and a woman who I knew by sight mostly because she is one of the older non-traditional students. It was she who presented the defense to the objection and although she was noticably nervous, I was really impressed with her argument. As the examination and cross-examination of the witnesses began, I was really floored by the quality of the presentations.

It was kind of odd, seeing my classmates suddenly mutate into attorneys. I mean, you're kind of used to seeing people dressed in suits and ties because of OCI. It kind of doesn't even register after a while. But it was different altogether watching them examine witnesses, lay out arguments, contest evidence, and so on.

I really enjoyed myself in the end. My job kept me just busy enough to not drift off during hte boring parts of the night, but the proceedings were actually far more interesting than I expected. It was almost like a sporting event-- watching the volleys, holding your breath to see if someone drops the ball... At one point, the Plaintiff objected to a certain witness's testimony on the grounds that it was hearsay, which happens to be the subject we've spent the entire semester up to now discussing in Evidence class. And I, from my perspective outside the heat of the moment, immediately knew how the Defendant needed to phrase his defense of the testimony to get the objection overruled. But he wasn't hitting on it. In fact, he wan't anywhere near it. And I soooo wanted to jump up and be like "The testimony isn't being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted! And it's a statement against interest anyway!" This was actually one of those clear-cut cases where Judge Hottie could have overruled the objection with reason (as opposed to just following Judge Oldie's advice), but the attorney just wouldn't give him a reason to. The judge even started asking him very pointed questions trying to nudge him in the right direction, but the poor guy just wasn't getting it. Judge Hottie finally had to sustain the objection.

But that was the only really big mistake I saw. For the most part, everyone was great and very professional. The only breach of that was one of the plaintiff's attorneys kept playing with her hair and couldn't stop giggling-- probably nerves. It was really cool.

Post trial, Judge Hottie kept the flirting going right up until the moment when Finbar showed up to pick me up. All of the participants had left, so it was just me and Judge Hottie. I was waiting for him to finish filling out the scoring sheets, since it was my responsibility to collect the sheets and turn them in. Finbar came in and sat with me at the back of the room. Judge Hottie's scowl got deeper and deeper. When he finally finshed the scoring sheets, he couldn't even be bothered to shake my hand (rude!) and rushed out of the room as fast as his little legs would carry him.

I had a lot of fun anyway and I volunteered to bailiff in the next round as well. Next year I might even go out for the team myself. I would really like to go up to each of the participants and tell them how great I thought they were, but I wasn't sure that it was appropriate at that point. Hopefully I'll get a chance to see them in the next couple of days and tell them.