During undergraduate programs there is an opportunity to be involved in Mock Trial. This is a fantastic way to get hands on experience doing what a lawyer would do in their career. Learning how to prepare for a trial, which is complicated and overwhelming at first is a great skill to have before entering law school. As you learn the steps and walk through step by step through the trial prep with your teacher you will gain skills that will help you determine if you want to be a trial attorney or an attorney who specializes in a different area. The skills include learning how to handle objections, how to enter in evidence, how to craft tightly worded opening and closing statements and how to give a direct and cross examination. From the layout below you can see the flow that my college mock trial teacher took us through. The only thing to realize is that objections and rules of evidence need to be memorized, understood and applied throughout this process. They aren’t something you can try to learn the day of a trial, you have to be able to apply them quickly during a trial and objection battle. Each step has a multitude of little steps underneath it, so dissecting them into bite size pieces and talking to your mock trial instructor through the processes.
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