American Bar Association Representation In Mediation Competition Preview

Written by Elizabeth Braswell

On Friday, February 26, the John Marshall Law School Mediation Team heads to St. Louis, Missouri for the ABA Representation in Mediation Competition at Washington University School of Law. 

The team will first deal with Drugs, Sex, and Rock-N-Roll. The dispute is an emotionally-charged custody battle between the surviving parent of a five-year-old child and the grandparents with whom she has been living for five years. The JMLS teams will be representing the grandparents in the custody battle.  Leading up to this clash, the biological parents of the child were punk rockers in a band. The biological parent has filed a claim for full custody of the child and for the person journals, CD collection, and royalties of an album in the estate of the deceased who died without a will.

The second round will challenge the contract knowledge of the teams with a client who wants to enforce a contract that was written on a napkin. This scenario is a mediation over breach of contract before any complaint has been filed. An established dentist helped a new dentist begin a practice within the same community by providing the new dentist with $150,000 in startup money and cosigning a loan for an additional $150,000. This was done with the idea that the practices would merge after two years. Now that those two years have passed, the younger dentist doesn’t want to merge practices any longer. Adding to the challenge is that fact that they were family friends and salvaging the relationship needs to be factored in.

John Marshall will be represented by two teams in the competition. The first team, Felicia Ganther and Joe Jakubowski, will meet Hamline University in the first round and Marquette University in the second round. While the second team, Brandon Rogers and Liz Braswell, will face Marquette University and Washington University. The team has been coached by Professor Liz Simon, ADR Assistant Director of The Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution. In addition to Professor Simon, JMLS alum Ian Bucciarelli assisted with preparing the teams for the competition. Over the last month, the teams have also been working on the situations for each round with the assistance of the alternates, Martha Choromanska and Liz Homsy, playing the roles of the opponent.  The top teams from each region will advance to the Nationals in San Francisco, California in May.

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American Bar Association Client Counseling Competition Results

Written by Patricia Ross

The ABA Client Counseling team traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to compete in this year’s competition at Marquette University. Joseph Napoli and Tanya Sinclair competed on one team, while Ann Hagerty and Barry Kanarek comprised the second team. Both teams showed strong counseling skills and superior knowledge of the white collar crime problems thanks to great preparation by the coaching staff during practices. The teams competed in three grueling rounds on Saturday morning.

One of the rounds consisted of a tax-evasion problem with underlying themes of blackmailing a government official. The client in another round had been served with an indictment for money-laundering and baby smuggling in connection with her international adoption agency. The last of the three morning rounds involved the illegal dumping of hazardous waste materials.

Although the teams did not advance, they received strong, positive critiques from the judges who were both attorneys and mental health professionals. Congratulations on all the hard work this semester! Many thanks to our coaches Assistant United States Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg and Assistant Attorney General Ron Rascia as well as the help from team members Kat Morse, Nick Coriano, Jamila Ahmed and Patricia Ross.

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Texas Young Lawyers Association Trial Competition Results
QUARTERFINALISTS

Written by Mary Scholl

Congratulations to The John Marshall Law School Texas Young Lawyers Association National Trial Competition team.  The team, consisting of Angel Alcaraz, Stephen Berrios, Lauren Davalle, Patrick Keegan, Julia Mezher, and Mary Scholl, advanced to the quarterfinals this weekend.

This past weekend, John Marshall entered two teams into the Texas Young Lawyers Association National Trial Competition.  The regional tournament consisted of 22 teams from law schools in both Indiana and Illinois.  The competition was in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, drawing in judges and attorneys from all over the state, to take part in one of the oldest and most prestigious mock trial competitions in the nation.  The two winners from the “final four” round will take the trip down to Texas in April to compete in the National Competition.  Although John Marshall won’t be making it to Texas this year, it was a successful weekend for all competitors.

Team 1, consisting of Angel Alcaraz, Stephen Berrios, and Lauren Davalle, went against Northwestern in the first round on Thursday, February 18, at the County Building in Indianapolis.  Team 2, Patrick Keegan, Julia Mezher, and Mary Scholl, also went up against another Illinois school, Northern Illinois University. 

The second round on Friday, February 19th, had both teams going to head-to-head with Indiana schools; Team 1 against Valparaiso University and Team 2 against Indianapolis’s own IU-Bloomington. 

Friday evening, 22 teams, their coaches, and judges, crammed into a small room at the Hilton Garden Hotel, eagerly awaiting the results of the first two rounds.  After the announcement was made, team members Julia Mezher, Patrick Keegan, and Mary Scholl didn’t waste much time at the banquet, heading back to their rooms to get ready for the next rounds the following morning.  Placing 5th overall, the team was up against the number 3 team, Northwestern; coincidentally, the same team that fellow team members Angel and Stephen had competed against in the initial round on Thursday. 

The pressure was on for the Saturday morning round, that left the team and coaches unable to read the judges, wondering whether they would get the two votes necessary to make it on to the final four.  One judge admitted he scored the teams within 1 point of each other, leaving the teams unsure what to expect.  However, that round turned out to be John Marshall’s last trial.  Northwestern prevailed and moved onto the final round.

After a long weekend, the team was grateful to their coaches Assistant United States Attorney Vicki Peters and JMLS alum Bethany Biesenthal for the long hours spent working with them.  The team knew they wouldn’t have made it that far without all their dedication and expertise.   Congratulations to the TYLA team and coaches for advancing at the regional competition in Indianapolis this weekend!

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Section 3509(m) of the Adam Walsh Act:
Why Experts Can’t Help

Written by Brandon DeBerry

On July 27, 2006, 25 years after the kidnapping and brutal murder of Adam Walsh, President George W. Bush signed into law the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (“Adam Walsh Act” or “Act”). With the passage of the act Congress made extensive changes to laws affecting sex offenders. These changes have received praise and criticism from advocates on all sides of the sex crime debate.

Particularly, Section 504 of Title V of the Adam Walsh Act, codified as 18 U.S.C. § 3509(m), has received fierce criticisms for attorneys and their clients who have been charged with possession of child pornography. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3509(m), any property or material that constitutes child pornography must remain in the care, custody, and control of either the government or the court and that notwithstanding Federal Rule of Criminal procedure 16 (“Rule 16”), a court must deny a request by the defendant in a criminal proceeding to copy, photograph, duplicate, or otherwise reproduce any property or material that constitutes child pornography as long as the government makes the property or material reasonably available to the defendant.

This paper presents both sides of the debate regarding the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 3509(m) as it applies to a defense expert’s testimony.  

Download the complete paper.

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Katie Siefert

Written by Christina Morrison

Trial Advocacy Honors Board Position: Events Coordinator

Q.  Where are you from?
A. I was born and raised on the southside of Chicago;  Mt. Greenwood to be exact.

Q. Where did you go to undergrad and what degree did you earn?
A. I graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I earned my B.A. in political science and philosophy.

Q. Have you always wanted to go to law school?  
A. No, not always.  I originally had plans of getting a degree in marine biology.  When I figured out I couldn’t leave Chicago and that there weren’t any oceans around the city, I decided to go to law school.

Q. What responsibilities do you have in your board position as Events Coordinator?
A. My responsibilities really revolve around planning social events for the trial advocacy council.  We have been very successful in the past semester and a half with getting the council together outside of school for social activities.  This semester, I am planning the end-of-year Gala, in which we honor the year’s trial and ADR teams and their accomplishments.  Since all of our teams have been so successful this year, the Gala is going to be a great night!

Q. Do you know what area of law you would like to practice?
A.  I would really like to practice criminal law, specifically criminal prosecution.  I will begin interviewing this summer and am keeping my fingers crossed that I get hired at the State’s Attorney’s Office here in Cook County!

Q. Have you been on any trial teams while at John Marshall?
A. Yes, I am on the AAJ team right now and our competition is this coming weekend.  It is a medical malpractice lawsuit and our team is absolutely amazing.  We lucked out with a great group of 8 students and 4 coaches and are hoping to bring home a couple of big wins for JMLS this weekend.  Last semester I was on the NTAC team and we were very successful.  Our team was a quarterfinalist in the Michigan State competition, which was the farthest JMLS has advanced since we started attending that competition.

Q. What do you like best about being on a trial team?
A. I really enjoy being on a team because of the variety of people that you get to work with.  Our team this semester consists of people with a wide range of backgrounds, that bring a great mix of personality to the team.  In addition, the knowledge of evidence that you gain far surpasses any knowledge you can gain from reading an evidence book.

Q. Do you work while attending law school?
A.  I clerk at the State’s Attorney’s Office in the Gang Prosecutions Unit. 

Q. Do you enjoy working at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office?
A. I love working at the State’s Attorney’s Office.  The attorneys there are some of the best trial lawyers in this city.  I have learned so much from working with them.

Q. What would be your “dream job” after you finish law school?
A. My dream job would, of course, be at the State’s Attorney’s Office.  I would also like to get involved with different government law enforcement agencies at some point.

Q. If you decided not to practice law, what would you do?
A.  I still sometimes feel like I wish I would have stuck with my guns and moved out to the East Coast to get involved in marine biology.  I always wanted to be a part of rescue and recovery teams along the coast, saving beached animals and protecting the natural habitat of these animals.

Q. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?
A.  I would love to move to Australia.  The reefs there are amazing and I have always wanted to learn how to surf.

Q. What advice would you give students who want to try out for trial teams?
A. Take the time to prepare and memorize.  The confidence that you can exude from walking into your tryout with no notes is a huge plus for any tryout.

Q. As you approach graduation, what is your favorite memory from law school?
A. Accelerated Trial Advocacy during the summer is a blast.  I was fortunate enough to take the class with a lot of my friends.  Also, the lineup of teachers for this class is unmatched and we were able to learn from federal court judges and amazing trial lawyers from Chicago.

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