Mount Saint Mary mock trial team reaches regional finals in historic season

Whether a student is an aspiring attorney or simply looking for an engaging extracurricular activity, many life skills can come from mock trial.

Enhance your public speaking. Think on your feet. Devise cogent arguments.

These are just a few of the exercises that prepare students for challenges that arise in the working world. Few mastered them better this past winter than Mount Saint Mary Academy’s mock trial team, which advanced to the regional finals as one of the last six teams standing in New Jersey.

“It teaches you how to be confident in what you say, how to choose your words with care,” the Mount’s mock trial advisor Danielle Lovallo said. “The confidence that I’ve seen these kids grow into over the years is a lot. I was very privileged to have most of these girls from this year’s team as sophomores, and they stuck with it. Just seeing them go from being terrified sitting in the witness stand and big eyes, to completely turning the tables on the cross-examining attorney is just immensely rewarding.”

There were 25 Legal Lions this season: four attorneys, six witnesses and 15 understudies/jurors. A single competition runs for about two hours or less, where one school has two attorneys and three witnesses for either plaintiff/prosecution or defense.

There are subtle differences with the rules of mock trial, but it simulates real court cases where attorneys ask questions and respond to objections, while witnesses issue statements on direct examination. Jurors render a verdict, but it doesn’t influence the competition because naturally they can’t be unbiased voters.

“Every year we’ve had a lot of people join, but this year, all the witnesses and attorneys were people that were sort of mock trial veterans and had done it for at least a year,” said senior Mary Catherine King, who played an attorney role. “We were all really experienced. But then also a lot of us were seniors, and since we all had that in common and we were all friends, it definitely made everything seem more cohesive and sort of conversational between the witnesses and attorneys. I think that definitely helped us.”

The state’s 216 high school teams all argue the same case topic, which alternates each year between criminal and civil. This season was a civil case involving the death of a champion show dog who received a flea treatment, and the plaintiff was suing for financial damages based on what the dog would have allegedly earned.

Mount Saint Mary’s began working on the case in October and won competitions against four schools to seize the Somerset County championship in February at the Somerset County Courthouse. Then the New Jersey Law Center hosted regionals, where the Mount defeated Westfield and Hunterdon Central but did not advance past the finals.

Still, this year marked the Legal Lions’ second county title in three years and only the second time in school history that the team made the regional finals.

“Mock trial is kind of like gymnastics where each judge holds up a different score and has their own perceptions. There are two judges who score each trial,” Lovallo said. “It’s all subjective, so that’s why one of the things we try to stress with the girls is that you have to try to do everything as best you can, because you can’t let yourself get complacent … you have to look out for what the judges are responding to. You really have to be firing on all cylinders.”

Sometimes the difference between winning and losing is your closing argument, which King certainly delivered in the first round of regionals with what Lovallo described as “the performance of her mock trial career.”

“Closing is always my favorite part because I just get to stand up for eight minutes and no one can interrupt me, versus questions, they can object to me,” King said. “I just remember hearing the other side say one thing, and I was like, ‘I know I can use that and tear it to shreds in my closing.’ It’s just the best feeling saying that, and then hearing and feeling everyone else’s reactions when I said it.”

King was a witness when she started in mock trial as a freshman and competitions were held over Zoom. She became an attorney in her sophomore year when in-person mock trial resumed. She felt more in control in that role and gained confidence in the courtroom.

King was named “Best Attorney” in the Mount’s first competition of the season as the plaintiff against the defense of Gill St. Bernard’s.

“It’s helped me with a lot of life skills,” said King, whose goal is to eventually attend law school. “The most obvious one is public speaking, but also thinking on my feet, and even writing, I feel like I’ve gotten so much better because I can just form an argument.”

King learned to play both sides of this year’s case when one of Mount Saint Mary’s defense attorneys got sick, and she stepped up in that role during the regional semifinals.

The speaking roles of attorney and witness are best for students who can offer a higher time commitment. Being passionate about acting or debating can also help the team score well.

“I think that something that’s always been a strength of our team, which I think goes to our coaches mostly, is how formal and polished we are when talking to the judges,” King said. “I think that definitely gains us a lot of points that other teams might not think is that important.”

Lovallo has been at the helm of the team for six seasons, while Elizabeth A. Weiler, Esq., has been the attorney coach for 17 years to offer valuable opinions on the case and courtroom rules.

“We do a number of scrimmages throughout the season to really refine our case, test what we’ve got against other schools and see if our case is really as strong as we think,” Lovallo said. “You don’t know who’s going to object to what, or what their reasoning is going to be. You try to prepare for every objection you could get. But sometimes it just kind of comes at you from left field, and you have to just adapt.”