At Mock Trial, Jumbos turn prosecution and defense into a competitive sport
Aadi Aggarwal, A29, presents a statement for the defense as the Tufts Mock Trial club prepares for a competition.
Seven Tufts students huddle in a circle outside Bromfield-Pearson Hall on an October night, holding onto each other, leaning in. One by one, they share affirmations:
“Let’s have fun, let’s bring energy!”
“I’m so excited—this is the beginning of our hell week.”
“We’re here because it’s time to get better.”
The words and the energy build and build, until the students start shouting, waving their hands and shaking their feet in tandem: “Five four three two one, five four three two one!”
“Jumbos on three,” they shout, hands piled together in the air. “One, two, three,” they exclaim, then lift their hands higher into the air, and walk into Bromfield-Pearson.
The shouts, the gestures, and the energy feel like a sports huddle. And in a way, it is—but these competitors wear dark suits and skirts, pumps, and Oxford shoes. They’re part of Tufts Mock Trial, 33 students who, according to the group’s Instagram account, “pretend to be attorneys and witnesses.”
Amelia Farrar, A27, prepares to call a law enforcement officer to the stand for the prosecution.
Tufts Mock Trial launched in 2004, adding a Jumbo presence to the competitive art of trial law. The simple concept asks a lot of participants: complex problem-solving, storytelling, acting skills, and teamwork. In return, it creates the chops to think quickly, write well, or apply to law school—all within a community that fosters the same loyalty, care, and frustrations as a family.
Tufts is one of more than 400 colleges and universities that await the American Mock Trial Association’s (AMTA) release of a fictional legal case every August. Those schools send some 700 teams to each other’s invitational competitions throughout the fall. Late in the calendar year, AMTA’s elimination competitions begin, with teams vying for a spot at nationals in the spring. Ahead of nationals, a new case drops and those still competing prepare anew.
Tufts Mock Trial, currently ranked 55th in the country (26th last year), is divided into four teams: A, B, and two C teams. The program has made it to the National Championship Tournament 10 times; in six of these competitions, they placed in the top 10. Their best year was 2021, when the A team took second place at nationals.
Sami Feteiha, A28, Aidan Connors, A26, and Amelia Farrar, A27, huddle with the rest of the prosecution team before a scrimmage.
Tufts Co-Presidents Aidan Connors, A26, and Sam Nashel, A26, say legal professionals coach most collegiate Mock Trial programs. Not at Tufts, where Nashel and Connors are in charge, working from Olin Hall’s Laminan Lounge. Being student-led is Tufts Mock Trial’s founding principle, Nashel says. “It means everything to us.”
Ninety Hopefuls, Eight Slots
It’s a lot of work, beginning with tryouts in early September. This year, roughly 90 students auditioned for eight slots. Some, like Connors and Nashel, did Mock Trial in high school. Others did debate, or drama. About half aspire to become lawyers.
Once formed, the teams dig into AMTA’s 200-plus-page case. This year’s is the murder trial of a reality TV show contestant charged with killing a competitor. The pages include affidavits, evidence, and lots of legal forms. Each team prepares to argue both sides of the case and serve as witnesses. They first come up with a theory of what happened—in this case, how the victim really died—and build arguments from there.
Julia Vela, A28, as a police inspector, and Sami Feteiha, A28, in the role of a prosecuting attorney, discuss the evidence.
“I think this is one of the most fun parts,” Nashel says of theory-making. Teammates comb through documents for details, read trial advocacy textbooks, and mine their own life experiences for plausible explanations.
“It is a fun intellectual puzzle. It’s got this performance piece, but the puzzle is: How do we take the information in this case problem and present two sides of the same case?” says Bennett Demsky, A22, a Tufts Mock Trial alumnus. “Underneath all those layers, it’s a storytelling exercise.”
“You handled/argued that so well” and other notes of encouragement decorate a legal pad.
Being student-run gives Tufts Mock Trial members broad experience: witnessing and lawyering; giving opening statements and doing cross-examinations. Returning students spend lots of time coaching first-years. Members organize Tufts’ yearly Mumbo Jumbo invitational, and secure extra funds so everyone has court-appropriate clothing and can travel to out-of-town tournaments. The co-presidents choose teams in September and “stack” them in November, making them more competitive ahead of AMTA competitions.
From Hell Week to Network
Demsky and Oliver Marsden, E20, EG21, are two of about six Tufts Mock Trial alumni who volunteer regularly with the program, providing feedback at scrimmages and judging at Mumbo Jumbo. And they’re just a handful of the alumni for whom Mock Trial was a formative experience. “Our alums are everywhere, but they’re concentrated, obviously, in the legal field,” Demsky says.
Aadi Aggarwal, A29 and Zoe Renazile-Winter, A27, confer for the defense.
When the team walks back into Bromfield-Pearson after the huddle—known as “shakedown”—it’s for a scrimmage ahead of Mumbo Jumbo. To the uninitiated, it seems like a Gen Z Matlock convention. There’s a preponderance of sticky notes, legal pads, glances at teammates in other rows, and laughter. Lawyers take notes and motion emphatically as they argue before the alumni judges.
The scrimmage kicked off hell week, the days leading up to a tournament. Instead of practicing the usual three times a week for two hours, “I’m there basically from 5 p.m. ‘til midnight every day,” says Nashel. It’s time-intensive and labor-intensive. There’s also “a lot of chatting, a lot of people going on food runs,” he adds.
Team members have to understand the laws at hand, determine which witnesses and attorneys they’ll play, then write and memorize scripts. Finding one’s style is key, and can determine whether a team will win or lose: while judges score on a 1 to 10 scale, they do so based only on their own valuation of a performance—the competition is completely subjective.
Zoe Renazile-Winter, A27, enters documents into evidence.
Like athletic teams, Tufts Mock Trial members watch videos of past teams’ performances, and of their own. “You’re watching your own content and evaluating it, seeing where you can improve,” says Jesse Kitumba, A28, who’s wanted to be a lawyer since he was 7 years old.
At this year’s Mumbo Jumbo, Tufts placed third—and the A team won Boston College’s Mockathon in November.
“We talk about ourselves as a family, and it isn’t just a heartwarming thing,” Connors says. “It’s a really good analogy, because we spend so much time together, and inevitably we will get frustrated with each other, and we need to keep working and traveling together.”
The intensity of a group that enjoys talking, going deep, and joking around while focusing near-obsessively on the case is hard to capture, Marsden says. It’s also what keeps him coming back as a volunteer. “I ran a marathon last October, and that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I did not train as hard for that as I prepared for some Mock Trial tournaments,” he says.
