It is no surprise that in this generation eyebrows tend to go up when a student shares their plans of going to law school. Especially considering the fact that Stanford’s Law School has an acceptance rate of 11.3 percent. However, students should not be discouraged to live their dreams. As it turns out, Owatonna High School has the perfect program to help prepare students for a career in the law field.

Mock trial is an activity where students take real life court cases from the past that have already been resolved and act them out as the court case was. The State Bar determines which case they will be doing and from there the coach assigns certain roles to each student participating. Roles include those such as the defendant, attorney and jury members. However, there are not any scripts that are memorized, the students are left on their own to come up with strategies and solutions on the spot as the case is carried out. OHS Sophomore Sheldon Jensen said, “My favorite part of Mock Trial is that it gives me a chance to enhance my arguing skills through the justice system by arguing with other opinionated people.”

While it may be not as well-known as other clubs, Mock Trial is far from new to the game and has been around longer than most students have been around.  As for the competitions, there are three different stages that the students will have to try and pass during the season. They have school competitions, regional competitions and then finally the state competition.

After competing in the regionals on Thursday, Feb. 4, the Mock Trial team discovered they would continue to advance in the competitions. On Friday Feb. 19 the Mock Trial team will compete in Round 5. This round determines if they make it to the State Tournament.