Friday, November 04, 2005

ITAP

The first team to compete this year did not fare well. A report from the second team doesn't hold out much hope. A wall in the Trial Advocacy office tells us we shouldn't be all that surprised. Maybe it's time for a change.

I think the better practice would be to have a regular Trial Advocacy class for 2Ls (it wouldn't have to be a mandatory class, but you might want to have three classes of 20 open exclusively to 2Ls) during the Spring semester and then to hold tryouts either during the summer, the beginning of 3L or perhaps have their "final" in Trial Advocacy act as the tryout - kind of like the way Moot Court does it.

Taking a Trial Advocacy class now, I feel that I'm so much more prepared now to show off my true abilities as a trial advocate than I was last year trying out for ITAP when I had no idea. A quick thank you to Prof. Rolnick for that.

Of course, it's probably impossible to add three more classes of Trial Advocacy. But if SWLAW wants to be better represented at those Trial Advocacy competitions....

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

After hearing from the two teams who have already competed, I don't think the lack of success on the ITAP wall is due to ability. It seems that luck plays as big, if not a bigger role than ability. For example, the first team to compete was "blessed" with a judge who turned away from the person giving the closing and was giving the thumbs up to the opposing team's coach during the trial. It really is disappointing that so much hard work is put into these competitions and really it comes down to the luck of the draw. I will report more on this when I go to my competition.
-Brian

W said...

I guess luck does have something to do especially considering the subjective nature of the judging. But why does it seem like the other schools are playing red on roulette whereas SWLAW is playing double zero?

Anonymous said...

Winning a competition has a lot to do with luck. It is very subjective and judges may like very different things: for example, some like advocates reading from the notepad, which I think always sounds boring. Also, in my competition, judges did not like the fact that we argued law in our closings. Well, that is what an advocate is supposed to do, but apparently they do it differently on East coast. And even though judges weren’t supposed to judge teams by local rules, they still did it.
As to our school, SWLAW puts much more resources into moot court than into ITAP. This year is different and ITAP started to be treated as an honors program. So may be something will change. Oksana

Anonymous said...

Just got word from the Santa Fe team. They placed 5th out of 24 teams, not bad at all.
-Brian

W said...

That's pretty damn good actually. Congratulations to them. And hopefully you have similar if not better results next week buddy.

Anonymous said...

Hey...we were tied for second place and just missed the finals by one ballot. STOP TALKING SHIT ABOUT US!!!!