Law Camp 2009 exposes high school students to the trials and tribulations of law

 

Linda Steele’s legal team looks a little young. Her husband died of skin cancer after his skin biopsy was misread as benign and she’s suing Dr. Kitchener of the pathology lab. It’s a tragic case, so why are her lawyers looking like they are in high school?

 

Because they are. Steele is the fictional plaintiff in a mock trial malpractice case at the center of Lipscomb University’s Law Camp 2009 that attracted 15 high schoolers to campus June 14-19.

 

Just like a real trial, the mock trial had depositions, hostile witnesses, a judge; the defense even presented a graphic of how Mr. Steele’s cancer spread from his skin through the blood stream to the brain.

 

“It’s kind of intimidating. The case had all these big words in it,” said Kathleen, Siciliano, a junior from Chattanooga.

 

“We had people doing extra research at night on the computer,” said Kiara Yokley, a senior from Nashville’s East Literature High School.

 

It sounds pretty much like a real law firm. The girls’ hard work paid off as they won the case for the defense on Friday, June 19.

 

“I liked the intensity of it,” said Gennica Greenlee, a senior from Nashville’s Antioch High School. “Some witnesses kept changing their statements and we had to keep reminding them, ‘Well this is what you said in your deposition!’”

 

Lipscomb University’s 2009 Law Camp, coordinated by the Institute of Law, Justice & Society, provided a rare and exciting opportunity for the high school students, allowing them to see, hear, experience and practice all the aspects of the legal profession.

 

The week-long residency camp gave participants a chance to explore sports and entertainment law, health care law, social justice issues, the court system and the legislative process all while promoting diversity in the future legal workforce.

 

Many high school students expect law to be like what they see on shows such as Law & Order and CSI, said Charla Long, executive director of the Institute for Law, Justice and Society. Lipscomb’s Law Camp gives participants the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

 

“What this camp does is give them a fresh dose of reality about what the law is really about,” she said.

 

As the capstone of the camp, students participated in the mock trial pitting the boys against the girls, and required them to use the knowledge and skills they acquired throughout the week. Bryan Stephenson, of Middle Tennessee Law, served as the judge, ruling in favor of the defense.

 

“I was hoping to see some objections,” Stephenson told the mock lawyers, who were pretty nervous about their first trial. “But all of you did a great job.”

 

“The students learned the nuts and bolts of how to put together a case and how to break down a piece of law,” Long said. “We had attorneys work with the students to help them work on their delivery, explain how to examine and cross-examine witnesses and make objections at trial.”

 

On various field trips, students were able to sit at counsel’s table in Judge Seth Norman’s Nashville Drug Court, eat lunch at the district attorney’s office, meet with the Department of Financial Institutions’ Commissioner Greg Gonzalez and visit a correctional facility and local law firms and corporations. In addition, Nashville Police Chief Ron Serpas came to visit with students on campus.

 

To prepare for their mock trial, they heard presentations from local lawyers such as David Esquivel, the 2005 Tennessee Bar Association Pro Bono Attorney of the Year, and experts such as Sandy Bledsoe, executive director of risk and insurance management at Vanderbilt University. For example, Bledsoe taught the elements of a medical malpractice case and presented a mock case for the students to act as jurors and learn the ins and outs of monetary awards.

 

“For a risk manager or a lawyer, you have to look at the range of a potential award and see that sometimes it can be very broad,” Bledsoe told the students. “Going to trial is always a risk to both sides because you never know how the jurors’ challenges and own life experiences will come into the decision.”

 

Participants in the camp came from Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, and more than half were students of color.

 

“We recruit diversity for this camp because the law profession today isn’t very diverse nationwide,” said Long. American Bar Association statistics show that minorities made up less than 17 percent of the legal profession in 2008.

 

“Our goal is to bring diversity into the legal pipeline and get to the students early, to provide them with tunnel vision for heading into a law career. They need to be writing, debating and participating in model United Nations programs. If we don’t work with the students along the way during the process, we won’t have the diversity we need.”

 

As part of that effort, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, and Kristal Hall Boone partnered with the Institute of Law Justice & Society to provide eight diversity scholarships for minority students to come to Law Camp.

 

In addition to the need for more diversity, in recent years many professionals have realized the need for more people with legal knowledge overall in various business fields, Long said. That need has sparked the creation of many undergraduate legal studies across the nation, including Lipscomb’s law, justice and society major.

 

“If we think broadly about what you can do with a law degree, it’s still a degree in demand,” said Long. “Many people with law degrees don’t always work in a legal profession. They can work in politics, communications and non-profits.”

 

“This camp has given me the knowledge and the experience I wouldn’t normally get if I was just staying at home,” said Ryker Cathey, a junior from Paris, Tenn. Cathey said he wants to be a corporate lawyer because he likes negotiating and making deals.

 

Greenlee said she wants a to be a trial lawyer, so the mock trial was very helpful for her. “I feel like I need to know what I want, because I like to plan ahead,” she said.