The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

U-High mock trial team competes at ISBA’s invitational during Spring Break

U-High mock trial team competed against about twenty teams in the 2023 Illinois State Bar Association’s (ISBA) High School mock trial invitational during Spring Break on Saturday and Sunday, March 18 and 19. ISBA’s annual tournament was at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

For a second time, Sahana Unni earned the Best Witness award—first time being at the Niles North Viking Scramble on Saturday, March 4. “The team performed quite well at the tournament with stellar leadership by the co-captains,” Christy Gerst, mock trial coach and U-High History department chair, says. “In our prosecution case, our judge ruled that our team had prevailed on our involuntary manslaughter count, which basically means we demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant recklessly caused the death of the victim.”

Ten U-High students headed to ISBA’s invitational, but the team has several other students attend team meetings and practices, according to Gerst, who is a former litigator specializing in labor and employment law. The team began practicing in the fall, and about half of this year’s team are returning members. 

“They are committed to building a healthy, collaborative environment in which students learn about the law ‘by doing,’ as Dewey would say,” Gerst, who also teaches AT Comparative Politics and Global Relations and AT Modern European History, says. “As the coach, I handled the logistics and ran special sessions in which students were introduced to the fundamentals of criminal law as well as continued to build on their knowledge of trial procedure as well as the rules of evidence.”

ISBA’s objective with the mock trial invitational is “an opportunity for students to learn what it is like to prepare and present a legal case before the Illinois Courts,” according to ISBA’s site.

Gerst, who also co-leads the Summer Link Business, Humanities and Social Science program, says she “would love to have more Lab parent attorneys work with the team in the future [since] most schools have several lawyers working with their teams and coming to the tournaments to serve as presiding judges, jurors/evaluators and bailiffs.”