Good Luck Prudence!

[Not Afraid]

Prudence's Moot Court competition starts tomorrow in New York City. I know she's been stressing BIG TIME over this thing and I want to wish her good luck as she argues her ass off.


Sooooooooo.......
GOOD LUCK PRUDENCE!!!!!!!!
May your team wow the pants off of the judges.:snap: :snap: :snap:

[€uroMeinke]

Good Luck Prudence!

Show that Big Apple what you're capable of, we'll be sending you Mojo!

[LSPoorEeyorick]

You don't need luck! You're dazzling on your own merit. Hang in there and knock 'em dead!

[BarTopDancer]

Knock em Dead!

[Kevy Baby]

Break a tort Prudence!

[wendybeth]

Kick some ass, Pru!:cheers:

[Prudence]

These are all particularly nice things to read as I rattle around in this giant room alone, waiting for Ryan to arrive tomorrow morning, and trying to not to panic that I don't have things memorized. And that I'm too tired right now for any memorization to stick. And that my shirts are all wrinkly.

The first two rounds are Thursday and Friday evenings. I will only argue one of those two nights - although the odds are that the on-brief evening will come first and, since I'm on-brief for my issue, the odds are that I will argue Thursday evening and then be time keeper Friday. But, won't know anything until after our meeting tomorrow afternoon - just before the rounds start.

[tracilicious]

Good luck!

[Bornieo: Fully Loaded]

All the best Pru!!

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Do your best, and Good Luck!

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Here's a good luck tiki - :tiki:

[Snowflake]

Go get em!
:snap:

[Strangler Lewis]

All the best.

[blueerica]

MOJO YOUR WAY PRUDENCE!!!!!

Good luck!!!

[katiesue]

Good Luck! You'll be fabulous.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Best of luck to you, Prudence! :)

[SzczerbiakManiac]

You GO girl, knock 'em dead!

[CoasterMatt]

Prudence, SLAY 'EM!

[Matterhorn Fan]

Good luck!

[Prudence]

Round one is over - and as predicted, I argued tonight.

What a subjective piece of crap this all is. Everything our coaches drilled us to do, the judges hated. And I'm certain the judges were all trial attorneys and/or judges, as they *loved* one of our opponents - they loved his "informal style". Oh, they admitted it would be totally inappropriate for arguing before the Supreme Court, which was what this was supposed to emulate, but rather than ding him for being too informal they rewarded him for being such a good future trial attorney. Which would be great, if this was a mock trial. But it's not. Grrrr. As another infamous poster might say: I call shenanigans.

Three of five judges gave me second to last ranking. One judge ranked me last. The last judge ranked me first, with the highest individual score of any of the 4 competitors from any judge. So one of them loved me, and it had to be either the skinny guy in the middle on the bottom row or the soft-spoken black guy with an accent on the top row. Wish I knew, although it's not like that info would serve me any benefit.

Anyhow - technically we lost the argument by a slight margin, because 4 of 5 judges were so smitten with mr. trial court who made jokes with the judges and left the podium half-way through his argument to retrieve his binder, bring it back to the podium, flip through to find what page something was on, and then returned the binder to its resting place on the center table. WTF?

However, in this round our brief score counted for 1/3 of the total, and we did well enough on the brief that we actually won the round overall. So, we're 1 and 0.

And, the mean coach said several times that I did a really amazing job. And since what I want to do when I graduate is what she does for a living, and since she's local to me, knows what I want to do, and has the appropriate connections, it's probably more important for her to like what I did than for the NY attorneys to have liked what I did. (Although, I must reiterate, one did like what I did, and a LOT.)

Anyhow, one round is done. Tomorrow I'm the time keeper and don't have to argue. Tomorrow night I find out whether I will be arguing or time keeping Saturday morning. And anything further depends on how we do in that third round Saturday, because after that we only keep going if we win the round, and the brief scores will no longer count.

So, no thinking tomorrow!

[wendybeth]

Wtg, Prudence!!!:cheers:

I'm very relieved for you- this has to be a total stresser, and I admire that you're doing it. I'd be too damn chicken****. Gl in the next round!

[CoasterMatt]

:cheers: You rock!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Awesome, sounds like you performed up to your own standards, who gives a flip what the judges pay attention to. Huzzah!

[Prudence]

Well, I'll be getting another shot at argument. The petitioner's side of the issue kind of tanked today, and we lost, so if we had the option of choosing which side to be tomorrow, the coaches were clear that it was going to be mine. As it happens, the other team won the coin toss - but since they chose the other side anyhow, I'm still going tomorrow. and in the early heat, of course.

I'm trying to re-muster my confidence. It helps that apparently the mean coach is telling everyone and their uncle how amazingly I did yesterday. Apparently I rocked her legal world. I hope she mentions this to her employer, should they need a new associate...

[Snowflake]

VISIBLE MOJO for you, my dear!:snap: :cheers:

[wendybeth]

What Snow says!:snap::cheers::snap:

[CrazyLegs]

Good Luck :)

[Prudence]

The hell is over.

The other team, of course, did wonderfully, and is now going on to nationals next month in Chicago. We got eliminated at the first opportunity.

It was a mixed bag of experiences that I'll have to describe more later, since I'm exhausted. I did learn a lot from the coaching, as much as I hated it. The competition itself? I learned a lot, not all of it pleasant.

In the first round, our competitor got higher marks for his excellent trial court style, even though this wasn't a mock trial and his lax manner would have been inappropriate for an appellate venue (particularly the Supreme Court.)

In the second round, when I didn't argue, my team mate apparently had a little too much to drink at lunch and somewhat let the team down.

In the third round, the other team had an amazingly smooth delivery - in part because they were making things up. They never had to look at their notes because if they didn't know the answer they just acted like they did - and that's how one wins competitions. The "judges" usually don't spend any time reading about the case beforehand, so they don't know any better, and the feedback is all about how the other team answered so easily and seemed to know all the details without ever having to check. Of course, they were wrong, but accuracy apparently doesn't count in this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I have too many shreds of honor left somewhere deep in my psyche and I can't bring myself to make things up or misrepresent facts or whatnot. Even if this isn't "real" and even if it's how the game is won. And not that the other team from my school did that, just that the schools my team went up against did. Well, one of them probably did, but one of them is also exceptionally honorable (and, probably not coincidentally, also their weak link.)

Anyhow, I have very mixed feelings about this right now. I vacillate between wanting to enter the next in-house competition and wanting to avoid anything like this again. One minute I'm sure that appellate work is what I want to do, and the next minute I'd rather just be a secretary for the rest of my life. One minute I'm proud of what I did do, and the next I'm furious with myself for having wasting everyone's time.

And NYC started to grow on me while I was there. I might go back some day.