For the second year in a row, Juniata’s Mock Trial team (lovingly called the Legal Eagles) have made it to the National Championship Tournament. This year’s tournament was hosted by Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and the best schools in the country were there: Harvard, Yale, UCLA and of course, Juniata College.

The case being argued was a legal malpractice case. The plaintiff, Robin Skye, was wrongfully convicted of killing their spouse, and ten years later is suing their Defense attorney Aubrey Gold for not doing their job well enough. The team had to prep both the Defense and Plaintiff sides of the case for a little over a month.

As a junior at Juniata, this was my third year on the team and my second time going to Nationals. I have always loved the ability to make connections with other people on campus and people from different schools. This year was no different. During our four trials throughout the weekend, we got to meet and become friends with people from the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, New York University, and Haverford College. We also got to scrimmage Northwestern University, Macalester College, the University of Arkansas, Hillsdale College, and the University of Georgia. Overall, we finished in the top 48 teams in the country, although official rankings will come out later this summer, so stay tuned!

Mock Trial is of course a serious sport, but we also got to be tourists. From the iconic Bass Pro Shop Pyramid to the duck walk at the Peabody Hotel, we got the full Memphis experience, including getting barbecue at the Rendezvous restaurant. We spent a lot of time bonding as a team and making connections with the other teams we saw, including getting pizza with Macalester.

With the end of Nationals, the Mock Trial season is officially over. We started in August of 2022, and got to travel across the country, from Pittsburgh to Memphis to California. We have played teams as varied as Penn State University, Brown University, and even smaller schools like Wellesley College.

We look forward to the next year of Mock Trial, and the start of Mock Trial Bootcamp next August, where we welcome the new members of the team to campus. Stay tuned for next year’s season, where we will hopefully get a ticket to next year’s National Championship Tournament in Chicago, hosted by Loyola University!