A little secret to lawyering: You don't always have to know what you're talking about, as long as you're confident.
That's the strategy Carter G. Woodson School's mock-trial team will carry into next weekend's regional competitions, an annual event for high school students around the state: Read your legal briefs, know the foundations of the law, and never let the jury see you sweat.
If you're going to object, object loud. If you feel nervous, shove that feeling down and project your voice. Make the jury feel it.
"This is about Carter G. Woodson walking in there and everybody wondering where you came from," legal aid clinic attorney Valene Franco told the team. "And you guys knocking it out of the park."
As of Friday morning's practice, Carter's team had work to do. Meek questions needed to get stronger, attorneys working with the group said. Voices needed more inflection. The word "um" needed a one-way ticket out of everyone's vocabulary.
But the charter school expects to compete next week, when it and 63 other teams travel to eight different regional competitions. A real judge will sit on the bench. A jury of lawyers will decide who advances to a statewide competition and, eventually, to the nationals in New Mexico.
Public schools, private schools and charters like Carter, which are taxpayer-funded but run a bit differently than traditional public schools, will compete against each other in the mock-trial competition. Several teams from the Winston-Salem area have entered, including groups from Carter G. Woodson, Forsyth Country Day, Calvary Baptist Day and the Central Carolina Homeschoolers based in Lexington.
Carter will head to the regionals with an underdog mentality — some schools in the competition have freshmen classes larger than Carter's entire high school enrollment of 75 students.
Because Carter is a smaller school with limited resources, UNC School of the Arts student Leah Caddigan decided to make a documentary about the team. She watched Friday morning as a two-man sound-and-camera crew filmed the team's prep work for Saturday's competition.
Regardless of how that competition goes, Carter students on the team said they're learning more than the law.
"I thought (the law) was pretty boring," said sophomore Odalis Dominguez, who won a "best witness" award for Carter during last year's competition. "(Now) I'm learning a lot. I'm actually thinking about becoming a lawyer."
"I'm learning to always try to see both sides," said Lyslee Duncan, a junior on the team. "If you choose a side, find support for your reason."
Carter G. Woodson, a charter school founded in 1997, has long had an association with the law. Founder Hazel Mack is a lawyer and regional director for Legal Aid of North Carolina, which provides free legal assistance to people who can't afford lawyers.
Two local lawyers, Ben Harris and Kenneth Love, volunteer an hour a day at the school. They brought Franco and Forsyth County Assistant District Attorney Derek Gray in Friday to advise the team, which practiced in a real courtroom at the Forsyth County Courthouse.
Asked why he's willing to spend so much time working with a handful of students, Harris said it's because of Mack and her legacy of outreach.
"Just her history in terms of being a community activist," Harris said.
Mock-trial classes get into the basics of the law, but they're more about giving students confidence and comfort with public speaking — "all those types of things that go into every career," Love said.
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