Intellectual Life

Building the Case: The Thrill of Mock Trial

/ Alex Mostaghimi / Leave a comment

BC Law’s Mock Trial competition has been an exhilarating part of my law school experience. This year, 22 teams litigated the fictional case State of Lone Star v. Justice Jackson, where the defendant was suspected of felony theft and burglary in a late-night smash and grab of the boutique clothing store, Fox + Cat Vintage.

Our team had to dive deep into the case materials, examining every detail—from the eyewitness testimony to the intricacies of the fingerprint evidence on a pipe allegedly used in the crime. We practiced creating opening and closing statements, each word carefully chosen to create a smooth, coherent, and convincing story. 

While each round involved the same case materials, the endings always varied. The name of the game is admitting evidence that benefits you while trying to exclude evidence that harms you. Different teams have different case theories. One team of prosecutors may think an exhibit is crucial to proving their case, while another team may think the same exhibit is irrelevant or bad for their case.

One memorable part of the Mock Trial competition is questioning witnesses. With each cross-examination, it’s crucial to expose inconsistencies in the story or reveal new facets of a witness’s personality or reliability. For example, I questioned Angel Nguyen, the defendant’s ex-wife and main alibi witness who said the two were watching The Bachelor together at the time the burglary occurred. While you can prepare to your heart’s content, you can never fully anticipate exactly what the witness’s responses will be. Witnesses will squirm and try their hardest to avoid the traps the cross-examining attorney is laying in front of them. That’s the fun of the game.

That process was a mix of adrenaline rushes and critical thinking. It’s public speaking, trial practice, evidence, and thinking-on-your-feet all wrapped into one. Things will go fast and you have to act faster. If you don’t make a timely objection, the judge will tell you, “the horse has already left the barn.” For that reason, knowing the material and concepts well enough to invoke their substance and argue it on the spot is crucial. At the very least, you won’t be bored.

If participating as an attorney isn’t your thing, I’d strongly recommend being a mock trial witness. Not only is embodying a character fun, but there is also a skill component in helping evoke the story your side wants to tell, while making it as hard as possible for the other side to do the same.

I’d like to thank Caleb Brady, Noah DeRossi, and Christian Bilgrien for co-chairing the tournament. Without them, it simply wouldn’t be possible. They put on great presentations teaching the basics of trial advocacy and brought in fantastic judges who provided invaluable advice to our young legal minds, giving us a glimpse on what the real courtroom looks like.

Alex Mostaghimi is a second-year student at BC Law. Contact him at mostagha@bc.edu.

TikTok’s No Good, Very Bad Day in Court

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

I have previously discussed the First Amendment implications of a potential TikTok ban. Removing TikTok from US markets implicates not just the speech rights of TikTok US—an American subsidiary of China-based ByteDance—but also those of its 170 million American users, many of whom actively create content on the platform. To prevail, the government must demonstrate that the ban furthers an important governmental interest unrelated to free expression and that it does not substantially burden more speech than necessary to achieve that interest. The latter is particularly challenging, which is why courts enjoined earlier bans on TikTok and WeChat.

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What’s the Deal with the 1L Elective?

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

We’re nearing the end of the fall semester, and course registration is almost upon us. For 1Ls, that means being able to choose your spring 1L elective. While the idea of an extra class may seem overwhelming, for me, the 1L elective ended up being an opportunity to discover a new area of the law.

The 1L electives fall into three buckets. The large majority are “Experiential” classes that allow 1Ls to gain practical knowledge from practitioners, in topics ranging from Mergers & Acquisitions to Criminal Law to Work Law. Some are “Perspectives” courses which push students to think about the meaning of “law” and “justice” through the humanities and social sciences. My 1L elective, Introduction to Human Rights, Refugee, & Humanitarian Law, was a Perspectives course, and taught me both the successes and challenges of defining and litigating human rights issues. Our class also visited the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington D.C. to see this work in action (check out Alex’s great article about the trip!). Finally, the policy-oriented courses, like Restorative Justice in Courts, take a critical look at our legal institutions and explore pathways for reform. 

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With 100 Things to Do, What’s One More: Why I Joined Client Counseling

/ Samantha Torre / Leave a comment

It’s October, and across Boston leaves are changing color, the sun is setting earlier, and Christmas decorations are making an – excessively – early appearance at Costco. More locally, on the Newton Campus, the word outline is being thrown around, you can’t go 30 feet without hearing someone stressed about a memo, and the realization that “Oh, the summer job hunt starts now,” has hit. 

With my packed to-do list staring me down everytime I open my daily planner, you might expect me to be hunkered down in a study room somewhere, noise canceling headphones in, ready to methodically complete all my assignments. Or, you might expect me to be darting in and out of office hours, trying to make sure I have the best understanding possible before I really sit down and begin exam prep. You might even expect me to be opening SAGE and starting my summer job search. 

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BC Eagles or Butterflies? I Say Both 

/ Malcolm Baytop / Leave a comment

Lately, law school feels like I am slowly emerging from the eye of a storm, armed with the certainty of its chaotic whirlwinds but anxious about how I will forge a path through it. As a 1L, the uptick in unfamiliar networking events and professional panels amidst the first-time memos and midterms makes the near future seem especially tumultuous. Many of my classmates surely feel the same. While I cannot stop the inevitability of our chaotic law school eras, I can offer some existential insight on navigating them based on my conveniently related interest in the butterfly effect.

The butterfly effect stems from the scientific study of chaos theory, which explains limitations to predictions in dynamic systems seemingly governed by deterministic laws. It captures how small changes in initial conditions within one area of a dynamic system can result in substantial effects in another. Explained metaphorically, this means that the mere flap of wings from a butterfly in one area of the world could cause a tornado elsewhere—or it could not. 

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“Proficient in Law, Grounded in Love:” Why BC Law is a Different Kind of Law School

/ Christine Lenahan / 1 Comment

1L orientation sometimes feels like trying to drink from a firehose. There’s so much crucial information being delivered, but it’s overwhelming to process it all while trying to navigate the maze of campus buildings—Stuart Hall to the East Wing, East Wing to the Yellow Room— and meeting professors and students who will surround and support your legal journey.

Amidst the flood of presentations on clinics, externships, career services, and the basics of legal education, one question lingers: When do we actually start “thinking like a lawyer”? Right now, I’m more concerned with absorbing all this information and keeping track of acronyms (CSO handles OCI… right?).

Then, on day two, a man in clerics appears in East Wing 115A/B. Enter Fr. Jack Butler.

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What Does “Are You IPTF” Mean? Let Me Explain.

/ Justin Sells / Leave a comment

I first heard someone ask that question as I passed through Stuart House my first week of 1L year. I thought to myself, what on Earth is “IPTF?” Is it an acronym signifying some state of mind, or perhaps some other law school-specific parlance related to the trials and tribulations of being a law student? I was never really good at keeping up with the lingo in high school or college, so to find a possible definition of “IPTF,” I first consulted a secondary source that some young people consider to be persuasive authority: Urban Dictionary. To spare you the trouble of visiting that source, it defined “IPTF” as follows verbatim (with typos): “‘iptf’ stands for I PITY THE FOO!!! famous saying of Mr. T”.

Not relying on a sole source, I continued my research and found that at Boston College Law School, “IPTF” actually stands for the “Intellectual Property and Technology Forum.” The IPTF is both a club and a student journal. As a club, the IPTF helps prepare students to be zealous advocates in intellectual property (IP) and technology law by hosting various guest speakers, firms, seminars, and “technology bootcamps,” and by connecting students with alumni of the IPTF who actively practice IP and technology law. As a student-run journal, the IPTF publishes legal scholarship with the goal of furthering the development of legal thought in IP law (including trade secrets, patents, trademarks, and copyright) and technology policy (including inter alia web-based civil liberties challenges, data privacy, and telecommunications law). 1

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These New BC Law Employment Numbers are Crazy Good

/ kristievhoang / Leave a comment

Numbers talk. 

BC Law’s Career Services office submitted its employment data to the American Bar Association this past month. Of a class of 243 students, 239 (or 97.9%) were employed, with 96.7% in a full-time, long-term, bar-passage required or JD advantage position.

72% were employed in law firms, and 22% were employed in positions in government, public interest, or a judicial clerkship. Massachusetts was the most popular destination for students post-graduation, with New York and California following behind. 

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Five Tips for Success When Applying for Law Review

/ Jonathan Bertulis-Fernandes / Leave a comment

As one of the Editors in Chief of the Boston College Law Review this year—and in keeping with my general life goal of seeking to encourage as many people as possible to consider law review—I thought I’d put together some quick tips for success in the application process. For my dear anxious 1Ls: I was in your shoes two years ago. I was exhausted. I was limping towards the summer break and trying to wrap my head around the commerce clause. But I did the application and got offered a spot on law review. And you can too. Here are my top tips for journal application success:

  1. Treat it like a job

Channel your inner Dolly Parton and treat putting together your journal application materials as a job. Take a couple of days off to recover from the post-finals malaise, then hit the ground running (but within the confines of an eight-hour-workday). Start work on the materials at 9 and finish at 5. You do not have to spend all of your waking hours on the materials—see my next point.

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Four Things I’m Looking Forward to in 2L

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

With less than a month before finals, the reality has dawned on me. After I take my last final for Con Law, on May 13, I’ll officially be done with 1L. Law school, thus far, has been a rewarding experience. I’ve learned more about the law than I could’ve ever imagined possible in just one year. 

Here’s what I’m looking forward to as I take the next step in my law school journey. 

  1. More free time 

Let’s face it. The 1L schedule is rough. In one way, it’s great to come away with exposure to all different types of law. But I definitely won’t miss the 8:30 am-4:30 pm school days. The main piece of reassurance I’ve received from my older peers has been that “it only gets better from here.” Having more of a work-life balance next year will certainly help. 

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