Mock Trial: Look to the Youth

BY CHRISTOPHER TAKASHI BHANG

It’s hard not to use hyperbole to describe my experience getting to know the students of the Marysville YMCA Mock Trial Team, and what it was like to share a room full of young people expressing their unlimited potential. But then, there’s a reason why phrases like blown away, peak, and scrumtrelescent exist.

I had the great fortune of being a rater at the final round of this year’s Mock Trial State Championship organized by the Washington YMCA Youth and Government Program. More than 1,000 students representing 51 schools and organizations from across the state participated in this year’s program. Of the graduating seniors, 35 percent say they will pursue a career in the legal field. 

Poise, preparation, wit, and civility were all on full display: Student attorneys and witnesses sparred with equally masterful understandings of the theories of the case and the rules of evidence, crisp recitations of law, and professional level opening statements and closings arguments. I watched a sophomore hold her own in a pretrial colloquy with the presiding judge, Washington Supreme Court Justice Colleen Melody. Coaches beamed, and I regularly checked to make sure my mouth wasn’t agape.

I had to tell someone about what I saw. I had to tell more attorneys, like myself, who didn’t already know that this happens every year, in classrooms and communities across the state.

After contacting the coaches of the championship teams, I was invited to spend an evening with the Marysville YMCA Team. (I had planned to also interview students from the state champions, University Prep, but the timing didn’t work out for this issue due to their preparation for the national competition in Des Moines, Iowa, and final exams.)

As the students and coaches made their introductions, what struck me was not just their clear exuberance for the law and the courtroom, but their love for the community they created. I felt like I was a guest at a family dinner table, or watching the mock trial season of Ted Lasso.

The whole team lit up to relive highlights from past mock trials, like when their award-winning witness evaded impeachment twice in the same cross examination. They cheered for each other on their college acceptances and part-time jobs, and bragged about how the salutatorian among them was actually smarter than their valedictorians. The introductions were peppered with the familiarity and inside jokes native only to beloved communities: the correct pronunciation of “niche,” the importance of soda can tabs, and how hilariously loud some of them can be.

Their volunteer coaches similarly displayed communal pride and love for what they do and whom they get to work with: a mother-daughter combo (a pre-law alum of the program and senior prosecutor), a superior court judge, a YMCA staff member who definitely knows more about the impeachment dance than I do, and a history teacher—“the man, the legend”—who started the program from scratch just a few years ago.

By the end of my visit, the students and their coaches had left me with a deep sense of satisfaction that our profession is in good hands. And they also gave me a task. When I asked what the WSBA could do to support their program and others like it across the state, the answer was clear: Send more attorneys to the classrooms and mock trial teams to judge, coach, teach, encourage, and inspire. It wasn’t money or new deskbooks. It was us. For us to show up. 

And I hope we do, WSBA members. I hope we seek meaningful opportunities to directly invest in these programs and young people. And in doing so, I submit we will be reminded—as I was—of the best parts of ourselves and our profession, the parts that knew that our possibilities were limitless in a community of professionals bound by the rule of law. 

Learn more about the Washington YMCA Youth and Government Mock Trial Program at: www.seattleymca.org/programs/youthprograms/washington-youth-government.

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