Little Lawyers

I've met a lot of impressive people at law school: reknowned professors, amazing guest speakers, and even a lot of my classmates are intimidatingly accomplished. But probably the most remarkable people that I've seen since I started law school were the high school kids I saw argue today.

One of the things that actually attracted me to American University was this program called the Marshall Brennan Constitutional Literacy Program (website here) where law students go to different public high schools around the district and teach kids about constitutional law issues. I really couldn't think of anything cooler and as soon as I found out that they needed volunteers for their competition, I signed up right away.

So even though I was feeling a little stressed out with school, I headed down to the DC courtrooms to see the months of these kids and (their law student coaches) put their months of preparation to the test. I was so impressed, not just by the all-star lawyers (I swear, some of these kids could give bar-licensed lawyers a run for their money, they were spot on) but by all the kids who partipated. All of the students stood up in those real courtrooms infront of law students acting as judges, answering really tough questions judges would throw at them as they were giving their arguments.

I remember that I had the opportunity to debate constitutional issues when I was in high school and that's when I got hooked. I actually came to DC by a program called NYLF in 12th grade and we had 2 mini moot courts. The big one was about prayer in public schools and the smaller one (held at my now law school) was about freedom of speech.

Days like these remind me why I went to law school. And that was exactly what I needed to push me through the end of the semester and get through finals.