Mock attorneys and witnesses from three county high schools are preparing for the 2014 Mock Trial Competition.

This year’s trial, which is the same for all participating schools in Pennsylvania, is “Kelly Simon as the administrator of the Estate of Jordan Simon -vs- Ruffed Grouse High School LLC.”

Henry and Christin Borger are the attorney advisors for Warren Area High School’s team of about a dozen students and Julia Dustin is the academic advisor.

Henry Borger said rehearsing for a play is “a pretty good analogy” for the practices.

“The schools received the case materials from the Pennsylvania Bar Association in late November or early December. We then held an organizational meeting to see which students are interested, and gave them the materials to read, review, study and spend time with,” he said.

Essentially, the case materials are documentation of a court case, listing the complaint, answer, testimony of witnesses, exhibits and everything that would be found in an actual case.

He said the students are then asked to decide whether to be a witness, attorney or team member. The roles of attorneys, he noted, are more difficult and requires more experience than witness roles, with an understanding of how the process works.

They then have tryouts. “Student attorneys from previous years obviously have a leg-up on the role,” he said, adding that experience as a witness or team member can help with playing the role of an attorney in later years’ competition.

After assigning roles, they work for 10 days with the witness and attorneys, bringing out evidence, and formulating a theory of the case for both side.

When they have learned their roles, they do dry-runs through the case over a two- or three-day period, fine-tuning their presentations and learning how to handle and use objections.

He said, “The level of preparation is far more than any academic structure, and at the competitions you can clearly see the schools’ level of preparation for the competition,” noting that preparation is every bit as important for mock trials as it is for real ones.

He said that each school will have a plaintiff team and a defendant team, and to win a round schools must win both sides of a match.

The District 10 competitions will be held in Erie, sponsored by the Erie County Bar Association. The initial match-up will be Jan. 29 and Warren will be the defendant team versus Oil City High School’s plaintiff team, with Warren’s plaintiff team versus Youngsville High School’s defendant team.

There will likely be several rounds of competitions in District 10 before advancing to the next level, similar to high school sports. Borger said that last year, District 10 had three rounds.

In addition to Youngsville and Warren, students from Sheffield will also compete.