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Feb. 24th, 2007 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
commotiocordisSo. Just realized I didn't post the last thing I typed all up before going to bed on Wednesday night, so had to backdate that and stick it up. Here we go about the yay that was Thursday night.
Mock trial on Thursday. Before I start, just wanna say this now so I'm not talking about it the entire time. Man, we got the hot jury. No kidding. There was this brunette chick that looked like she was totally in the wrong place in a courtroom (she's going to be able to use that to her advantage every time she tries a case), and next to her a blonde that was also really pretty, but a different kind of pretty (more girl next door than the pornstar hot the brunette had going on). The blonde had been on jury before for one of my teams, and I remember that she scored me really well, so that was promising. Twas hard to believe that either of them were lawyers, though, because you don't expect non-TV lawyers to be good-looking, really.
We kinda sucked at the beginning -- our opening argumenter kinda screwed up big time, and then she was rattled by that and didn't do very well on her cross exam that was the next of our events. Which in turn rattled the rest of the lawyers, and so the cross examinations (as we were defense, and prosecution presents their case first) weren't the best all around. Which made me sad, because crossing is my best event and I know that something like that wouldn't rattle me overly much (because on my first round last year I locked up on my opening and had to grab for my notes, but still did fine on my direct), and yet I was stuck on the witness bench. (Yeah, I know, Carthago delenda est.) Ours were better than the other team's crosses, but not nearly as good as ours usually are.
But when our witnesses started going up, we got good. The first witness on our side got talked into a corner a little bit, but she wasn't bad at all. I had to go next, and so fixed my shirt (because I had this shiny purplegreen shirt over a black tanktop, and hadn't buttoned it because it looked cool open, but as a result had to keep making sure that the tanktop covered my bra, as I had to keep one on because the built-in thing wasn't nearly enough), walked up there, and sat down. Lo and behold, the dumb chair slanted backwards. That was weird. It felt like I was falling into the ground, because that plus the fact that the desk was high made me feel like I needed to sit on my knees to be seen. I didn't though, because that would have been dumb. Anyway.
Corinne questioned me, which was fine. We'd never really gone over the questions before as we both had decided to more or less wing it, because we were cool and could manage like that. In retrospect, I didn't give her much room to show off mad lawyering skills, which wasn't a good thing on my part, as it resulted in her getting lower points than she could have. I pretty much controlled the direct, but she didn't get hugely knocked down for that.
And then the cross. That was fun. I've still yet to hear a cross examination for my character that is anywhere near as good as the one that I used first round. I killed her. Seriously, it was great. She recrossed and was just pretty much floundering. I didn't answer a single one of her questions in the way she wanted to. And it's totally all because I'm normally a lawyer. I enjoy making the witnesses hurt during cross, so it was easy to turn it around and make the lawyer hurt. It's not my fault she kept asking questions that were really easy to get out of.
Towards the end, during recross, she was asking me stuff about making money on the book deal of the defendant, which I got, but I wasn't sure exactly where she was going with her questions. I knew where she thought she was trying to take me; to get me to admit that I needed the defendant's book to sell really well to get any money out of it, but I didn't know how that would do anything but perhaps discredit me slightly as a witness, it wouldn't do anything for the prosecution's case as a whole. But she was like "You're getting 1% of the sales of this book." Me: "Yes, I believe you already established that." Her: "You do realize that 1% is one penny out of a dollar." Me: "I am proficient in math, yes." And then Katie's parents (who were there because Katie's brother Ryan is on my team) laughed. Which made me smile (but internally, because smiling on the stand isn't always the best idea).
To summarize, I was snarking my ass off and it was pretty bloody fun.
It went well after that; our last witness (who was the defendant in this round) is always good, though he forgot during cross that he had been in the victim's house and possibly office before (as admitted in the victim's deposition, though it was a titchy mention and I know a lot of people missed it), and so I was not happy that I couldn't tell the lawyer on our side that so she (he? I forget who did his direct) could bring it up in redirect. Though I'm not sure whether admitting to it would have hurt us more than helped us, as though it does explain how his fingerprints got on the cabinet, it establishes that he knew where the office was for the burglary in question. So it was better to leave it out, even though it wasn't a conscious decision to do so, as far as I know.
And then the closings. There was only one stall working in the girls' bathroom, though, and as such I spent the 5 minute break between defense resting and closing arguments waiting in line there to get back right as the prosecution girl was starting her closing, so I had to wait outside (as she had already stood up and started talking just as I put my hand on the door and it would be uber bad form to interrupt) for that. Came back in for Ryan's, though, which was even better than last round (admittedly, though, last round he was off his form a little bit; this was more the Ryan!closing that I know and love). Is there such a thing as a closingargumentgasm? Because wow.
That cemented it, and we ended up winning with two ballots out of three. Story about that. The two women in the jury voted for us, the judge voted for the other guys. The judge, as it turns out, is very close friends with the opposing team's lawyer coach. Who, as our coach said, came to our coach after scores came out and told her so, and that we should have gotten all three ballots. I wanted to appeal it, because if that became the difference between going on to regionals and not, it was important. Ended up not mattering, as we're going on anyway. Yay for that.
I believe that this is the first time my school has ever gotten to regionals (though I believe that this is only the 5th or 6th year of our school having a team), so that's exciting. The two lawyerchicks who give point scores combined gave me for my witnessing 19/20 points (which is uberhigh, the highest score that they gave anybody) and an "Alexandria--great job as a witness!!" written on the comments section below the scores on one of their forms. (Which, I admit, gave me some kind of weird little thrill that these hot lawyer types acknowledged me by name.) And the sleazy judge specifically sought me out and shook my hand and told me that I did an excellent job. So, I am pleased.
I don't know whether I'll end up lawyering or witnessing for regionals. And, more surprising to me, I'm not sure which one I'd prefer. I enjoy being the lawyer more, hands down, but it's easier to get good scores as a witness (I've only been close to being that high as a lawyer once; the rest of the times I got some of the (and usually the) highest scores given to our lawyers, but they weren't 19/20, instead closer to 15/20--these guys scored rather easily, which I liked. The women seem to always give higher point scores than the male jurors.), and I want to help out the team doing whatever I can get them the highest scores doing. I'll probably end up doing the same things as these last two rounds, though, as we have to go on both sides, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday of the same week. And it's in two weeks. Meaning that we don't have time to really teach the roles to other people as we'd have to were we to switch around.
The teams we're going against for regionals I thought looked tolerable: one that only has six more points than we do and 5 ballots and one that has three less points but won all six ballots (as opposed to our 5 because of the dumb judge thing this round). But then I realized that one of the teams (the one that has six ballots but three less points) is one team from a school (we'll call them UC) of which the other team got 5 ballots yet scored 30 someodd points higher than we did. As you're only allowed to have one team per school go to regionals, the UC team with the five ballots didn't make it in, technically, because their partner team won all six and thus was ranked higher. But the teams will be combined, undoubtedly, as I believe you're allowed to mix teams and they'll go with the better scoring set. Thus, we're actually going to be going up against the UC team that scored 30 points higher than we did. Which is sad for us. But still. Even qualifying was so cool that it isn't even funny.
I'm excited, I guess is the point of this. So, yay us. *starts studying case more*
Mock trial on Thursday. Before I start, just wanna say this now so I'm not talking about it the entire time. Man, we got the hot jury. No kidding. There was this brunette chick that looked like she was totally in the wrong place in a courtroom (she's going to be able to use that to her advantage every time she tries a case), and next to her a blonde that was also really pretty, but a different kind of pretty (more girl next door than the pornstar hot the brunette had going on). The blonde had been on jury before for one of my teams, and I remember that she scored me really well, so that was promising. Twas hard to believe that either of them were lawyers, though, because you don't expect non-TV lawyers to be good-looking, really.
We kinda sucked at the beginning -- our opening argumenter kinda screwed up big time, and then she was rattled by that and didn't do very well on her cross exam that was the next of our events. Which in turn rattled the rest of the lawyers, and so the cross examinations (as we were defense, and prosecution presents their case first) weren't the best all around. Which made me sad, because crossing is my best event and I know that something like that wouldn't rattle me overly much (because on my first round last year I locked up on my opening and had to grab for my notes, but still did fine on my direct), and yet I was stuck on the witness bench. (Yeah, I know, Carthago delenda est.) Ours were better than the other team's crosses, but not nearly as good as ours usually are.
But when our witnesses started going up, we got good. The first witness on our side got talked into a corner a little bit, but she wasn't bad at all. I had to go next, and so fixed my shirt (because I had this shiny purplegreen shirt over a black tanktop, and hadn't buttoned it because it looked cool open, but as a result had to keep making sure that the tanktop covered my bra, as I had to keep one on because the built-in thing wasn't nearly enough), walked up there, and sat down. Lo and behold, the dumb chair slanted backwards. That was weird. It felt like I was falling into the ground, because that plus the fact that the desk was high made me feel like I needed to sit on my knees to be seen. I didn't though, because that would have been dumb. Anyway.
Corinne questioned me, which was fine. We'd never really gone over the questions before as we both had decided to more or less wing it, because we were cool and could manage like that. In retrospect, I didn't give her much room to show off mad lawyering skills, which wasn't a good thing on my part, as it resulted in her getting lower points than she could have. I pretty much controlled the direct, but she didn't get hugely knocked down for that.
And then the cross. That was fun. I've still yet to hear a cross examination for my character that is anywhere near as good as the one that I used first round. I killed her. Seriously, it was great. She recrossed and was just pretty much floundering. I didn't answer a single one of her questions in the way she wanted to. And it's totally all because I'm normally a lawyer. I enjoy making the witnesses hurt during cross, so it was easy to turn it around and make the lawyer hurt. It's not my fault she kept asking questions that were really easy to get out of.
Towards the end, during recross, she was asking me stuff about making money on the book deal of the defendant, which I got, but I wasn't sure exactly where she was going with her questions. I knew where she thought she was trying to take me; to get me to admit that I needed the defendant's book to sell really well to get any money out of it, but I didn't know how that would do anything but perhaps discredit me slightly as a witness, it wouldn't do anything for the prosecution's case as a whole. But she was like "You're getting 1% of the sales of this book." Me: "Yes, I believe you already established that." Her: "You do realize that 1% is one penny out of a dollar." Me: "I am proficient in math, yes." And then Katie's parents (who were there because Katie's brother Ryan is on my team) laughed. Which made me smile (but internally, because smiling on the stand isn't always the best idea).
To summarize, I was snarking my ass off and it was pretty bloody fun.
It went well after that; our last witness (who was the defendant in this round) is always good, though he forgot during cross that he had been in the victim's house and possibly office before (as admitted in the victim's deposition, though it was a titchy mention and I know a lot of people missed it), and so I was not happy that I couldn't tell the lawyer on our side that so she (he? I forget who did his direct) could bring it up in redirect. Though I'm not sure whether admitting to it would have hurt us more than helped us, as though it does explain how his fingerprints got on the cabinet, it establishes that he knew where the office was for the burglary in question. So it was better to leave it out, even though it wasn't a conscious decision to do so, as far as I know.
And then the closings. There was only one stall working in the girls' bathroom, though, and as such I spent the 5 minute break between defense resting and closing arguments waiting in line there to get back right as the prosecution girl was starting her closing, so I had to wait outside (as she had already stood up and started talking just as I put my hand on the door and it would be uber bad form to interrupt) for that. Came back in for Ryan's, though, which was even better than last round (admittedly, though, last round he was off his form a little bit; this was more the Ryan!closing that I know and love). Is there such a thing as a closingargumentgasm? Because wow.
That cemented it, and we ended up winning with two ballots out of three. Story about that. The two women in the jury voted for us, the judge voted for the other guys. The judge, as it turns out, is very close friends with the opposing team's lawyer coach. Who, as our coach said, came to our coach after scores came out and told her so, and that we should have gotten all three ballots. I wanted to appeal it, because if that became the difference between going on to regionals and not, it was important. Ended up not mattering, as we're going on anyway. Yay for that.
I believe that this is the first time my school has ever gotten to regionals (though I believe that this is only the 5th or 6th year of our school having a team), so that's exciting. The two lawyerchicks who give point scores combined gave me for my witnessing 19/20 points (which is uberhigh, the highest score that they gave anybody) and an "Alexandria--great job as a witness!!" written on the comments section below the scores on one of their forms. (Which, I admit, gave me some kind of weird little thrill that these hot lawyer types acknowledged me by name.) And the sleazy judge specifically sought me out and shook my hand and told me that I did an excellent job. So, I am pleased.
I don't know whether I'll end up lawyering or witnessing for regionals. And, more surprising to me, I'm not sure which one I'd prefer. I enjoy being the lawyer more, hands down, but it's easier to get good scores as a witness (I've only been close to being that high as a lawyer once; the rest of the times I got some of the (and usually the) highest scores given to our lawyers, but they weren't 19/20, instead closer to 15/20--these guys scored rather easily, which I liked. The women seem to always give higher point scores than the male jurors.), and I want to help out the team doing whatever I can get them the highest scores doing. I'll probably end up doing the same things as these last two rounds, though, as we have to go on both sides, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday of the same week. And it's in two weeks. Meaning that we don't have time to really teach the roles to other people as we'd have to were we to switch around.
The teams we're going against for regionals I thought looked tolerable: one that only has six more points than we do and 5 ballots and one that has three less points but won all six ballots (as opposed to our 5 because of the dumb judge thing this round). But then I realized that one of the teams (the one that has six ballots but three less points) is one team from a school (we'll call them UC) of which the other team got 5 ballots yet scored 30 someodd points higher than we did. As you're only allowed to have one team per school go to regionals, the UC team with the five ballots didn't make it in, technically, because their partner team won all six and thus was ranked higher. But the teams will be combined, undoubtedly, as I believe you're allowed to mix teams and they'll go with the better scoring set. Thus, we're actually going to be going up against the UC team that scored 30 points higher than we did. Which is sad for us. But still. Even qualifying was so cool that it isn't even funny.
I'm excited, I guess is the point of this. So, yay us. *starts studying case more*
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Date: 2007-02-25 07:23 am (UTC)OK I'm just lazy