The Harvard Law School Mock Trial Team recently won a national trial advocacy tournament in Chicago, despite having a relatively inexperienced team.

Two hundred twenty-five teams from nearly 140 law schools competed in preliminary rounds of the competition sponsored by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. That round narrowed the competition down to 14 teams at the national tournament, which took place March 21-25.

Team members Matthew P. Whitley, Cecilia Dickson, Rick T. Su and Rex D. Lee trained from mid-October to February for an average of 10 hours per weeks.

In the weeks leading up to the competition, they spent up to 40 hours a week practicing.

Whitley, a third-year law student and the only veteran team member, held auditions for the available spots on the team in the fall.

Harvard’s team was one of the few in the competition that contained first-year law students, as both Su and Lee were first-year students.

“The schools who had first-year students used them to carry luggage,” Whitley said.

Some of the competing schools had coaches and brought along fans for support. However, Harvard’s team had almost no outside coaching according to Whitley.

“Some of the schools came in with all third-year law students and a huge coaching staff” Su said. “I would call it an entourage.”

Many of the schools competition against Harvard’s team had five or six coaches.

“We knew we had done our very best,” said third-year law student Dickson, reflecting on the win. Teamwork and the financial support of HLS made the competition run smoothly, he said.