Legal Workshop & Mock Trial

As we were planning this year’s lawyering and judging presentation, we decided to focus on an issue that has been a highly publicized and incredibly important issue in colleges and courts around the nation this year: the issue of student safety and sexual consent on college campuses. We have worked with MBUSD Superintendent Mike Matthews, who fully supports the focus on this important topic. We have collaborated and thought deeply about how to present this issue in a careful yet substantive manner.

To that end, we have coordinated a “mock” trial for which students will serve as jurors. Serving as our Judge will be the Honorable Joyce Karlin Fahey, former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge, former prosecutor, and former Mayor of Manhattan Beach. Former MYC parent and trial lawyer Ed Lear, Esq. will serve as our Moderator. Civil litigators Laura Inlow, Esq. and Rizza Gonzales, Esq. will serve as our trial attorneys. The alleged victim will be played by Madison Smith, college junior student at Dartmouth College, and a key witness will be played by Tom Hier, third year law student at UCLA.

We appreciate the sensitivity of this topic, and have carefully crafted the workshop experience with that sensitivity in mind. There will be no sexually explicit content at all. The trial will touch only on the issue of the meaning of “consent.” We have attached for you an opinion piece we will ask our students to read prior to the workshop. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/opinion/sunday/mishandling-rape.html?_r=0.