You Say Yes, I Say No

27 October, 2024

I’ve seen my fair share of fake trials. My career as a professional student and occasional lawyer has been littered with them. The starting pistol for my own mock trial marathon, I remember, was fired late but with alarming volume. It was somewhere near the end of my second year at TSU when a fellow student, with the earnest concern of a prophet of doom, asked if I had a job. At the time, I didn’t even have a phone — a device generally considered essential for, you know, being contacted for a job. I think I was subconsciously trying to avoid being rejected: how can you be told ‘no’ when no one’s really asking for anything?

But my “no” to my fellow student was met with a look of profound curiosity. After all, I had a reputation for not being entirely useless academically. I showed up, I did the reading, I even did well on exams. I recall a lecturer once looking at my midterm score — an 18 out of 30 or something equally mediocre — and telling me to appeal it because “You should not have an 18.” I thought she had a point. So, this concerned classmate informed me that my CV’s alarming lack of height was a ticking time bomb. Without a hefty collection of conference certificates and work-experience trophies, landing an actual job would be a statistical improbability. And so began my great paper chase, the obsessive amassing of certificates to prove I had, in fact, existed.

A big part of this resume-padding exercise involved moot court competitions. I’ve already had to mentally revisit the Client Counselling Competition I won by a mile, only to have it snatched away by a certain beady-eyed individual. But the main event was always the classic moot court: your team, playing claimant or respondent, trying to win a fake case as if real money were on the line. They are, admittedly, great experiences. You learn argumentation, the delicate art of reading a judge’s poker face, public speaking, how to handle a grilling without weeping, and all the other ingredients for the sweet cake of litigation victory. I did them all, diligently. I built my credentials from absolute zero to... well, something quite a bit higher than zero.

The crown jewel of my collection was, of course, the Vis Moot of 2023-2024, which I coached for TSU. We endured a preparation period of truly biblical intensity, which was followed by a sweet ending, soured only by the fact that we lost just before the finish line. A near-culminating success, you could call it. Still, my point was proven: the strategy was correct. Had they listened to me a bit more, we'd have gone even further. But that's a story for another TED Talk.

The Americans, of course, love a good moot court. Their teams are always formidable, helped in no small part by the competitions being held in their native tongue. I had a noble idea to start an Illinois Vis Moot team — a concept that was met with a polite but firm void. It wasn’t even discussed, which is its own kind of answer. Still, I managed to get my fix. My advisor, Professor Pigou, bless him, helped me sign up for some particularly relevant classes, which is how I ended up in Family Law Practice.

The professor was a gem — a former Judge, a long-time lecturer, and an elected Democrat who welcomed me warmly. The class itself was an anthropological curiosity: it was composed entirely of girls, with me as the lone male specimen. I’ve never seen anything like it. The Judge was kind enough to let me write a paper analyzing Illinois’s relocation statutes, and he even invited me to dinner a couple of times where we chatted about the judiciary, lawyering in Illinois, and a touch of politics. It was in his class that I found myself, once again, ringside at a mock trial.

This was a family law dispute, with teams representing a husband and a wife in the faculty’s dedicated courtroom. Having already clocked something like 400 real litigations, the prospect of navigating the nitty-gritty of a student trial didn’t exactly thrill me. The Judge, however, graciously allowed me to attend as his glorified ornament — a sort of right-hand man, there to observe and offer a little feedback. I arrived a bit early the first day to find him already preparing. The students, dressed in their courtroom-best suits and armed with binders, were gathering. They even had mock witnesses lined up. The Judge had generously offered my services during class — “if any of you need a witness, our young gentleman friend here is available” — but alas, there were no takers.

The courtroom was a faithful replica. Public seating, a bar dividing the common folk from the lawyers, a jury box, and the judge's elevated perch. I had visions of sitting beside him, playing the part of a clerk making announcements, but he banished me to the jury box, placing me between him and the participants. He got into his judge’s gown, equipped himself with a gavel, and reviewed his notes. He was so procedurally sharp, I doubt any of the students could have held their own against him if the stakes were real.

The whole affair would have faded into the beige wallpaper of memory if not for one... small, theatrical detail. The teams were set: two white students on the right, two Black students on the left. After the team on the right concluded their opening, it was the other side’s turn. One of the young women approached the podium. And then, in a truly baffling bit of stagecraft, she didn’t just stand at it. She seized it. She proceeded to haul the piece of furniture back and forth, left and right, on a strange journey across the room until she had parked it directly in front of me. Facing me.

An interesting choreographic choice, given that the person she was supposed to be addressing — the judge — was several feet to her right. Her entire, demonstrative performance was aimed squarely at me, a person who wasn’t even a juror. I, for my part, wasn’t really listening. My mind had wandered off into the ether, wrestling with the great existential question: What, precisely, am I doing here?

After the curtain fell, I saw the same student approach the Judge, engaged in some frantic post-game analysis. She just wanted to be absolutely, positively sure he knew which parts of the presentation were hers and which belonged to her teammate, presumably so any penalties for incorrect analysis would be assigned to the correct party.

The Judge, bless his heart, just told her that everything was good.