ON TOP OF THEIR GAME

Trial competition program builds a national reputation

Under the guidance of more than a dozen alumni and members of the Western New York legal community, UB Law School’s trial competition program – which sends teams of students across the country to compete – is finding major success.

Chief among the good news is UB Law’s first-place victory in the Lonestar Classic Invitational Tournament in San Antonio, Texas, last fall, with a team consisting of Dan Morris, Lauren Cutuly, Sarah Wesley and John Menna, coached by Christopher O’Brien and Brian Melber ’96. They defeated teams from the University of Washington, Georgia Southern College of Law, Texas Wesleyan and St. Mary’s College of Law. In addition, Morris was named Best Advocate.

“This has been our most ambitious year to date in terms of the number of competitions entered and the number of teams winning or advancing to the finals of national competitions,” said Buffalo City Judge Thomas P. “Tim” Franczyk, who coordinates the trial competition program at the Law School. “You could say it is our breakout year. Within the past three years in particular, it has really gone through the roof.”

Franczyk said the Law School fielded teams in six competitions in the fall, in additional to hosting the Buffalo Niagara Invitational Tournament, and sent teams this spring to Syracuse for the regional round of the National Trial Competition, and to Rhode Island for the regional of the American Trial Lawyers Association competition.

Of the two teams UB sent to Syracuse, one – Leslie Travis, Aaron Glazer and Lauren Cutuly – advanced to the quarterfinals.

UB Law’s team – Dan Morris, Sarah Wesley, Mary Mogovero and Janine Sprague, coached principally by Joseph Marusak ’81 – won the regional competition in Rhode Island in February; in the national competition in West Palm Beach, Fla., in April, they came up just short on points of making the quarterfinals, after competing against two of the eventual semifinalists.

Preparation for the competition, Marusak said, “requires the students to prepare an opening statement and a closing statement; each student has to do one direct and one cross-examination. It requires them to write and rewrite and revise continually those sections of a trial. In addition, they have to master the federal rules of evidence on the evidentiary issues that arise, so they really have to do their homework in terms of arguments that have to be made on objections. It is a ton of work. We were practicing, on the average, a minimum five days a week, probably three hours a night.”

One of the keys to success in trial competitions, Marusak said, is responding to the unexpected turns and arguments that arise at trial. To train his team to do that, he persuaded seven or eight teams of two local lawyers to come to the practices and play the plaintiff and defense attorneys. “I found that to be invaluable,” he said, in honing the competitors’ ability to think on their feet. “Everybody has their script. The key to success is how well you respond to what the other side is doing, because you do not know what their script is.”

At the Lonestar Invitational, said coach O’Brien, it was “one of those situations where the chemistry of this team was just perfect. They were battling for each other the whole way through. Each one of them got points in the competition for best advocate on at least one or more judges’ ballots. It was a demanding team in that they always wanted to do better.”

For the coaches, he said, “it is just a fantastic experience, because it forces you as a practicing lawyer to rethink everything you do and why you do what you do. Why is it that we only ask leading questions on cross? Why is it that we want to tell a story in the present tense in our opening statement? Things like that.”

Melber, the other team coach, said the team received the competition problem about three months before the event. “The students meet with their coach up to five times a week,” he said. “They spend an incredible number of hours preparing.”

He noted that over the course of a competition, students end up arguing both sides of the case – and in some competitions, including Lonestar, even play the part of witnesses.

Another notable success came in November at the National Civil Trial Invitational Competition in Los Angeles, sponsored by Loyola Law School. UB Law’s team of Janine Sprague, Meg Culliton, Matt Coseo and Aaron Glazer came in second to the South Texas College of Law, having defeated teams from Loyola, the University of Alabama, Samford University (Cumberland School of Law) and Thomas Cooley Law School. They were coached by Julie Atti and Kristin St. Mary, classmates in the Class of 2003.

The two coaches were teammates on trial competition teams during their law school years, and “when we graduated, we wanted to do the same for future students,” St. Mary said. She said a group of about 15 legal professionals work with UB Law’s trial competition program, sometimes sitting in on other coaches’ teams to offer a fresh perspective. “It is a pretty rigorous training regimen,” she said. “We meet every night.”

Trial competition was “the best experience I had in law school, and it is nice to be able to pass that on to current students,” Atti said. “By the time I finished law school, I had done 29 full trials, because I was on several teams.”

The Los Angeles competition, she said, is “a huge deal. This competition is by invitation only, based on your national ranking. For first time in a long time, we are really on the map as a school with a great trial advocacy program.

“It is so much fun for the students, because not only are they learning so much about trial advocacy above and beyond what a regular class could teach them, it is basically practical application of the law. This gives them such a great tool in terms of coming out of law school and saying, ‘I have been in a courtroom, I know my way around a courtroom.”

Also in Los Angeles, the UB Law team of Delesha Burton, Joshua Korode, Yadira Ramos and Dianne Thoben competed in the annual Tournament of Champions invitational, open to law schools with nationally recognized successful trial advocacy programs. Though the team did not advance, it competed against all four eventual semifinalists in the preliminary rounds.

UB Law’s success in such competitions, Franczyk said, “really does build on itself. The point is not just to win competitions, though that enhances UB’s reputation. The primary goal is to give law students the best opportunity we can to become great trial lawyers.”