Transactions
May 30, 2001
Hoge Fenton: Coach Guides Trial Team to High Finish in Contest
Jim Towery, a litigation partner at San Jose's Hoge Fenton Jones & Appel, took a team of eight high-schoolers all the way to fifth place in a national mock-trial competition over Mother's Day weekend.
The team, from Lincoln High School in San Jose, represented California in the National High School Mock Trial Championship. This year, the competition took place in Omaha, Neb., from May 11 to 13 and included teams from 44 states.
"It exceeded all of our expectations," Towery says. "I was surprised. "The kids were surprised. It was a huge emotional thing."
The winning California team came in behind teams from Iowa, New Jersey, Washington and Arizona, in that order.
The students' faculty adviser, Kris Morrella, says, "It was very different than the state competition. They had to go by the host [state] laws, and there were changes in the jargon and legal vocabulary."
She says they also faced a jury for the first time at nationals because the student litigators are given a bench trial in the state competition.
Back in April, the Lincoln High Schoolers beat out teams from 34 California counties in a state competition sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Constitutional Rights Foundation.
Teams from Lincoln High made it to state competition six times in 14 years, but this year was the first time they made it to the nationals. The folks involved say they're happy to have placed in the national competition. The only California school to take first place nationally was Riverside's Arlington High School, and that was in 1994.
Staff Writer
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