{"id":395,"date":"2014-04-24T11:05:39","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T11:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ojen.turnbull.co\/?p=395"},"modified":"2018-01-24T16:46:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T21:46:38","slug":"building-a-better-mock-trial-dont-forget-the-debrief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ojen2024.turnbull.co\/en\/building-a-better-mock-trial-dont-forget-the-debrief","title":{"rendered":"Building a Better Mock Trial: Don&#8217;t Forget the Debrief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the 8 months I\u2019ve been at OJEN, we have run a lot of mock trials.\u00a0 A <em>lot<\/em> of mock trials \u2013 dozens, maybe hundreds.\u00a0 They make up only about a fifth of the programs run by our college and university volunteers (the group I work with most), but that still adds up.\u00a0 And those ones all have a certain shape: a team of volunteers recruits some lawyers, goes into a classroom or community organization, coaches the participants through their preparations, and then the participants hold their mock trial (sometimes in a courtroom or overseen by a judge, JP, or lawyer) as the big finale.<\/p>\n<p>But now I\u2019m rethinking this structure, which we use over and over again.\u00a0 Back in December, I tagged along for the culminating event of our <a href=\"\/en\/program\/charter-challenge\">Charter Challenge<\/a> program, where students argue an appellate-level case at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. After their mock hearing, they sit down with a few law clerks* from the Court of Appeal to receive feedback on their performance and debrief the exercise.<\/p>\n<p>Watching this back-and-forth between the students and the law clerks, we immediately saw the benefits. For students, being able to talk their experience over with someone who works in the justice sector made a huge impact on their learning, far beyond the details of the case at hand. \u00a0Students talked about the challenges and frustrations involved in their roles, how their opinions of the case changed as they put their arguments together, what would happen next if the case were real, and all kinds of other things. The clerks were able to add from their experience, correct misunderstandings, and explain aspects of how the legal system works in real life which would never come up in other context.\u00a0 It was, in short, <em>amazing. <\/em>\u00a0(The students thought so, too.) \u00a0And it\u2019s got me rethinking why this follow-up chat isn\u2019t part of every mock trial program we run.<\/p>\n<p>In the next year, I\u2019m going to challenge myself to build better mock trial programs, and it\u2019s going to start with this: giving students the opportunity, wherever possible, to benefit from the expertise of justice sector professionals <em>after<\/em> their mock trials, to process what they have learned, as well as before.<\/p>\n<p>And I challenge everyone who runs a well-established mock trial program to think through how they can build on the successes of the past and introduce new elements that will make the experience deeper and richer. We\u2019re off to a pretty good start.<\/p>\n<p><em>By Michelle Thompson<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*Law clerks in this context are people who have finished law school and are providing judges with legal research and support in order to fulfill LSUC\u2019s articling requirements before being called to the Bar and being licenced as lawyers.\u00a0 They are different than most Law Clerks, who have totally different duties and training and usually work at law firms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the 8 months I\u2019ve been at OJEN, we have run a lot of mock trials.\u00a0 A lot of mock trials \u2013 dozens, maybe hundreds.\u00a0 They make up only about a fifth of the programs run by our college and university volunteers (the group I work with most), but that still adds up.\u00a0 And those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-ojen-blog","tag-mock-trials"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"adnan","author_link":"https:\/\/ojen2024.turnbull.co\/en\/author\/adnan"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.3 - 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