Originally published in Student Lawyer magazine, October 2003 (Vol. 32, No. 2). All rights reserved.

Yale Students Win ABA Appellate Advocacy Competition

by Kenneth Gorton

Yale Law School took first-place honors at the ABA Law Student Division's National Appellate Advocacy Competition last April. The winning strategy? Secret arguments, a polished brief, and no coach, says team member Travis LeBlanc.

"By the time you do this 20 times, your answers sound kind of canned," LeBlanc says. "So we tried to develop secret arguments, something new to throw the other side off guard. That really made the difference in the final rounds."

Now in its 24th year, the National Appellate Advocacy Competition tests skills lawyers use in arguing cases at the appellate level: researching the law, writing a brief, and presenting oral argument before a panel of judges. Along with this competition, the Law Student Division also sponsors the Negotiation Competition and the Client Counseling Competition each year.

The Yale team topped a pool of 125 teams from 82 schools across the country. The preliminary rounds were held at the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. District Courthouse in Chicago. The championship round, which simulates a U.S. Supreme Court hearing, was held at the Illinois Supreme Court building in Chicago.

Jonathan Kravis and Kimberly Zelnick joined LeBlanc on the winning team. LeBlanc says when it came to training, they took their own initiative and often coached one another.
LeBlanc says his teammates asked the other teams' coaches for advice and often received it.

"We were pretty good at watching the other teams for style and mimicking them," he says.
The Yale team also won the Best Brief Award. "We made every effort to do our brief right," LeBlanc says. "This was our clear strategy from the start because of the way the points are structured. A good brief really increases your score from the beginning."

LeBlanc highly recommends the competition to law students. "We went against some phenomenal oralists," he says. "And we got comments back from 70 to 80 judges. Here, you're a team that has to work together, and that's what legal practice is all about."

The University of Texas School of Law took second place, with Gretchen Sween, Constance Hankins Pfeiffer, and Laura Pelanek making up the winning team. The Best Advocate Award went to Jeffrey White from Tulane University School of Law.

For further information on the Law Student Division's three national competitions, click here.

Kenneth Gorton, a 2L at Pepperdine University School of Law, is Student Lawyer's student editor.