Students from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago were crowned co-champions of the Buffalo-Niagara Mock Trial Competition. The competition is one of the biggest national invitationals in the country, with more than 30 teams competing each year.
Students Kyle Jorgensen, Shelby Page, Tyler Pearson and Frank Pehlke made up the John Marshall team. Pehlke also won the competition’s Best Advocate award.
The competition was held earlier this month at the University at Buffalo School of Law. Since 2004, teams from across the country have traveled to the prestigious annual competition, where law students try both sides of a homicide case before experienced judges and trial attorneys. The competition featured parallel championship rounds; the other co-champion team was Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, making for a Chicago sweep of the competition.
John Marshall’s team was coached by Andrew Manno, Christina Morrison and Anthony Sam. All three are John Marshall graduates. They were well prepared to coach the team, as Morrison and Sam won the competition themselves as students.
“Anthony and I were national champions of this competition back in 2009,” Morrison said. “It was exciting to team up again with my old partner to coach this competition after nine years. And it was even more amazing to be able to coach this team to a National Championship victory, which is an extremely difficult feat. The students worked very hard with a difficult case problem. We are so proud of them!”
“Our students’ performances at the Buffalo Niagara Mock Trial Competition were simply amazing,” Sam said. “I had the privilege of witnessing firsthand how they progressed during each round of the competition. It was incredible to watch the work the students put into this competition end with a National Championship.”
John Marshall’s Trial Advocacy Program was ranked 20th in the nation this year by U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools, tied with Harvard University and New York University. John Marshall trial teams compete in the areas of civil and criminal litigation, arbitration, negotiation, mediation and client counseling, and consistently place among the top teams in the country.
