February 13 , 2008

Cooley Team Wins Juvenile Law Moot Court Competition

Heather Grace, Oeishik (Kai) Goel, and Professor Evelyn Tombers

Cooley Moot Court Team Wins Top Honors
A lot of hard work paid off Feb. 9-10 when Cooley Law School students Oeishik (Kai) Goel and Heather Grace won top honors at the 13th Annual National Juvenile Law Moot Court Competition, held in Santa Ana, California.

The team has been preparing since November 2007. They completed the briefs in mid-January and immediately started working on their oral arguments.
In addition to the team’s win, Grace was named as
the competition’s Second Best Advocate by judges.
The competition, co-sponsored by Whittier Law School’s Moot Court Honors Board and Whittier’s Center for Children’s Rights in Costa Mesa, California, drew 16 teams from 11 different law schools. Law schools that participated included George Washington University, Seton Hall, Valparaiso, New York University, University of Arkansas, Little Rock, Touro College Law Center, Ohio State University, Hastings, DePaul, University of Miami, and of course, Cooley.

This year’s competition problem asked whether, consistent with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the California Constitution, and California education statutes, school officials could censor student speech on an Internet Web site and punish the student Web designers by suspending them when they refused to close down the Web site.

On the way to the No. 1 spot, Cooley’s team argued against teams from George Washington University (in one of the preliminary rounds), Ohio State University (in the quarter-final round) and Touro (in the semi-final round). The final round was between Cooley and Seton Hall. Mr. Goel and Ms. Grace received several “excellent arguments” comments from the competition judges during the five rounds that the team argued. Ms. Grace even heard a “Brava!” from one of the judges. That must have been the vote that secured her position as the competition’s second-best advocate.

Judges for the final round were the Hon. Randy Holland of the Delaware Supreme Court, the Hon. Richard Aronson of the California Court of Appeal, and Professor Jacqueline Gentry, Director of Whittier Law School’s Center for Children’s Rights, the problem’s author. All of the judges agreed that the final-round competitors were as good or better than attorneys they see appear in their respective courts.

The team’s coach, Associate Professor Evelyn C. Tombers, is extremely proud of these students. “These two were extremely easy to coach. They reacted well to suggestions, and they worked very well together.” She attributes their success to “not only the long hours they put in perfecting their argument skills, but to the teamwork and dedication to success that they displayed throughout the process.”

Cooley Dean Ann Miller was also very impressed with the dedication and success of the team, and Professor Tombers agreed, adding that the victory adds to an impressive string of recent successes.

Cooley has had several similar successes over the last couple of years. In 2005 and 2006, teams from Cooley won the National Moot Court Competition’s Region VI Regional Competition and went on to compete in the final rounds in New York City. The 2006 team, consisting of Susanna Meyer, Michael Dean, and Russell Kavalhuna, finished among the top eight law schools in the United States. In 2006, then-Cooley student John Zevalking took Best Advocate at Pace Law School’s Environmental Law Competition.
In addition, in 2006, the team of Christy Oakes and Marcie McWayne advanced to the semi-finals in the Texas Young Lawyers Association (TYLA) Regional Mock Trial Competition. A year earlier, in the 2005 TYLA Regional Mock Trial Competition, the team of Kevin Peterson and Shelly Small won the competition, and the team of Michael Douglass and Tasha James advanced to the semi-finals.

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, Cooley Law School is the largest law school in the country. Founded in 1972, it operates J.D. programs in Michigan's capital city in Lansing, at the new Auburn Hills campus in Oakland County, and in downtown Grand Rapids. Today, Cooley Law School has more than 12,000 graduates across the nation and worldwide and also offers joint degree and Master of Laws programs. Cooley admits classes three times a year, in January, May, and September. Additional information about Cooley can be found at www.cooley.edu.