Bar Mock Trial team make regional final

The College’s Bar Mock Trial team put on an outstanding performance at Chester Crown Court, as a number of schools from across the area competed in the regional final.

Each year, the Citizenship Foundation arranges for students up and down the country to get the opportunity to make the Law come alive. It enables them to take on various key roles that are present in criminal cases such as the role of barristers, witnesses, clerks and ushers for mock trials and enact their selected role in front of real judges and in real courts.

Despite their sterling performances in each of the three cases put before them, it sadly wasn’t to be for our mixture of first and second year students after narrowly missing out on a place in the national final to Wirral Grammar School.

Winning aside, the process and experience is one that none of the team will forget and it’s given some students definitive career aspirations. It is also enables students to improve their life skills – such as critical thinking and public speaking – whilst also gaining an insight into how the legal justice system works. In particular, first year Law students had just finished studying the Law surrounding non-fatal offences and the pivotal issue in the case of R v Wallace against Bishop’s Blue Coat Grammar School was regarding whether the defendant was guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. This was even more interesting for our students as they were able to formulate arguments based on their legal knowledge and put their legal skills into action.

Along with expert A Level teaching from the Law department at the College, the team was mentored by a practising professional barrister.

Law teacher at the College, Adam Hall, said: “I’m so proud of every single one of our students. They embodied everything our College stands for. They were dedicated, they were focused and most importantly, they were themselves. Considering we missed the regional final by 1 point last year, this was a different emotion. There were no tears of sadness, just joy that these amazing students had beaten the odds and got to a final against a very good team.

“There are students who would never have thought of this back in September when they enrolled, and they went to the Crown Court in front of senior judges and there were times when you couldn’t tell that they weren’t qualified lawyers. They really are a credit to the College.”

The College’s Bar Mock Team will continue to compete in friendly competitions against other local schools across the academic year and build on their exclusive and high-quality learning experience from Chester Crown Court.