Adams Mock Trial Program

Now in its twentieth year, John Adams High School in South Bend, Indiana has won the Indiana State Mock Trial Championship eighteen times and the National Championship twice. At Adams the Mock Trial program involves 75-100 students each year, comprising 10-15 separate teams. Most teams develop close bonds as they stay together throughout their four years of high school, and an intense practice and scrimmage schedule helps 6-8 teams qualify for State each year. Every year each team chooses a unique or quirky name to highlight their identity, such as this year's winner, "Not Necessarily."

Origins

Mr. Michael Szucs, a teacher in the Social Studies Department started the Mock Trial Program at John Adams High School twenty years ago. Of those twenty years, an Adams team has won the state title and gone on to national competition eighteen times. Mr. Szucs shared a bit of the program history with us in a note to faculty moderator, Ms. Donna Sharp.

I became aware of the program through my association with the University of Notre Dame Law School and its Street Law Program, which gives law students an opportunity to teach a government or civics course at an area high school. In the fall of 1996, I asked some of my students if they would be interested in competing in Mock Trial and there was a very positive response. One of those students, Cara Brook, was the daughter of Judge Sanford Brook and Barbara Brook, a local attorney. Both parents volunteered to help coach the team and Judge Brook took a particularly active role.

Judge Brook taught exclusively in the area of evidence and trial advocacy at the Notre Dame Law School. He was on the Bench in South Bend for twelve years before being appointed to the Indiana Court of Appeals. He also was an adjunct professor at Indiana University Law School.

Later, The Honorable Robert Miller Jr. Judge of the Federal District Court for Northern Indiana, and his wife, Magistrate Jane Miller, replaced the Brooks as lead coaches for the Adams’ program. Numerous other local attorneys contributed as well during the twenty years of the program’s existence.

John Adams won the State Championship for the first time in 1998. Interestingly, a member of that team, Erin Linder, later coached one of our two National Championship teams.

The success of the Mock Trial Program at John Adams is the result of many factors. In my opinion, at the top of the list are the following foundational principles of the John Adams Mock Trial Program:

1. All interested students participate. No one is ever "cut" from a team. Therefore, we never have to rebuild, we just reload.
2. Students organize their own teams; coaches and sponsors do NOT create teams.
3. The TEAM that wins the State Championship goes to the Nationals, not a sponsor-picked group of the best members of the various teams. Students earn their way to both state and national competition because they learn early on the value of cooperative teamwork.
4. The outstanding support of local legal community, members of which consistently give dozens of hours of their personal time each year to coach, mentor, file paperwork, host teams in their homes, judge scrimmages. Many other legal professionals give generous financial support the Adams Mock Trial Program and to others schools as well.