Ames Moot Court

Or "Go Team Norbit!"

Well, after the entire semester of research, drafts of briefs, moot-moot courts, and countless hours debating what shirt and tie combination would look best with my new navy, pinstripe suit, the hour arrived. Oral arguments!

For those of you not familiar, allow me to briefly explain. For our legal research and writing class, we are given a scenario: John Dorian (the characters were all named after Scrubs characters, including District Judge Janitor), a student at "Holmes University" in the make-believe district of Ames (a district with absolutely no precedent or case law, so every question is one of first impression, unless it's been decided by the Supreme Court), has been convicted of possession of cocaine. We are given a condensed record of the trial and the issues on appeal (4th amendment search and seizure by a private security guard and 6th amendment right of a pro se defendant to have access to a law library). It is our job to brief these two issues and then argue them before a panel of circuit "judges." Silvia and I (aka "Team Norbit") represented Mr. Dorian, while Kendall and Jessie represented the United States.

The actual oral arguments were really quite a bit of fun. I was worried what judges we would get. Our panel was actually quite nice. But that didn't mean they were easy. They asked some really good questions. And they gave some good feedback at the end.

While the oral arguments were an ungraded portion of a pass/fail course, they were a lot of fun. It makes me think that I really am cut out for this "lawyer thing"! Yay!