Leanna Bowman Goodrich, '99, Cheers Success of Mock Trial Team

Few would argue that vision ranks as a key component of good leadership. But sometimes a leader must wait patiently for her vision to reach fruition, as Leanna Bowman Goodrich, ’99, well knows. 

Goodrich enjoyed arguing cases on her high school’s mock trial team and was surprised when, shortly after her arrival on campus freshman year, she learned that the University didn’t have a mock trial team. She decided to change that. In 1997 at the beginning of her junior year, she contacted the American Bar Association to find out what was involved in founding a collegiate mock trial program.  

Goodrich researched everything thoroughly and made a presentation to Phi Alpha Delta, the University’s pre-law society, only two weeks before the application deadline for new teams. She succeeded in garnering the necessary student support and submitted the application that launched the University’s mock trial program.  

Goodrich had persuaded Porcher Taylor, the professor of her "Legal Dimensions of Leadership" class, to serve as faculty sponsor of the seven-member team, but finding a lawyer willing to volunteer as the team’s coach proved a little more difficult.  

Then Goodrich received a call one afternoon from a young associate with Hunton and Williams LLP asking her if, with her connections as chairwoman of membership development for Phi Alpha Delta, she could help him recruit people to sit on a moot court jury. “I told him I’d scratch his back if he’d scratch mine,” Goodrich said. “I’ll stock your jury if you’ll be our coach.” And so William Kanellis, or Bill, as students called him, became the team’s mentor.  

Members of the University's first mock trial team included, left

 to right, Victoria Marple, Nancie Lochard, Jonathan Petro, Dorey Cole,

 Leanna Bowman, Katherine Aphaivongs, Christopher Smith and coach William Kannelis

Mock trial competition is not for lightweights. Each team receives hundreds of pages of affidavits, exhibits, stipulated facts and other information from which to build its case. Some team members assume the role of attorneys and others witnesses. Training can be quite intense, especially during the final weeks leading up to a competition.  

“We were a gung-ho, close-knit group,” Goodrich said of that first team. “We put in a lot of hours. About a month before our first competition, Bill got a big case and couldn’t come to a lot of the practices because he was on the road. I would take notes and call him for advice. It was intimidating that first year when we competed against bigwigs like Howard University and the University of Maryland which fielded four or five teams each.” 

The team won some and lost some, but most important, it survived. The second year, at Goodrich’s urging, the University agreed to offer one academic credit to students on the mock trial team. This imbued the team with a certain degree of legitimacy and validated the enormous amount of time and effort members invested in preparation for competition. 

The team attended several invitational competitions to get some extra practice before tackling the regional competition, according to Goodrich. “We were up until 2:00 a.m. debating and practicing before the regional,” Goodrich said. Their efforts paid off. One of the freshmen on the team received an Outstanding Witness Award, and Goodrich, by then a senior, received an Outstanding Lawyer Award.  

Awards notwithstanding, the experience of participating in collegiate mock trial competition was extremely satisfying, according to Goodrich. “It teaches you how to think on your feet,” Goodrich said, “how to behave professionally, how to craft arguments to convince a judge.”  

Interest in the mock trial program has grown steadily since its inception at the University in 1997. During the 2005-06 academic year, the program finally received some much-needed emotional and financial support from the University, thanks to Daniel Palazzolo, chairman of the political science department, and Rodney Smolla, dean of the law school.  

A core group of 22 students served on three teams. And for the first time, one of those teams placed high enough at the regional competition to win a bid to compete in the American Mock Trial Association’s national qualifying tournament at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., March 17-19, 2006. 

Senior Michelle Swartz (below left), a leadership studies major and Jepson Student Government Association president, and sophomore Ashley O’Keefe (below right), a leadership studies and rhetoric and communications double major, served as lawyers on the eight-member qualifying team.  

The team, which placed fifth out of 48 teams in its division at the national tournament, came tantalizingly close to taking first place, according to O’Keefe. In addition, team captain Kenneth Abrams and member Joseph Weber won Outstanding Lawyer and Outstanding Witness awards, respectively. Not a bad showing for the team’s first national competition. 

Swartz and O’Keefe attributed much of the team’s success to its cohesive dynamics, despite the very different personalities and backgrounds of team members. “We had people who were majoring in drama, political science, biology, leadership studies,” Swartz said. “It worked because team members had an underlying respect for difference that helped with transforming individuals into a group.” 

Some team members assumed leadership roles, while others assumed follower roles, according to O’Keefe, one of the newest and youngest members of the team. “I took a follower role and learned from the others,” O’Keefe said. “Everyone trusted everyone else to do their job.” 

Participating on a mock trial team provides countless opportunities to observe different leadership styles and leader-follower dynamics, according to Swartz and O’Keefe. It also gave Swartz and O’Keefe the chance to practice some of the leadership challenges discussed in their Jepson classes, such as public speaking, conflict resolution, group work, critical thinking and the crafting of persuasive, cogent arguments.  

Both Swartz and O’Keefe plan to attend law school. Swartz will be studying for the LSATs while working as a paralegal at McGurieWoods LLP beginning this fall. O’Keefe looks forward to continuing her involvement with the mock trial team, and she hopes, sharing in a first-place win at the national tournament, during her last two years at the University.  

Like her mock trial team successors Swartz and O’Keefe, Goodrich also planned to attend law school. She changed her mind, however, after spending a year working at Peterson Worldwide Consulting preparing documents for lawyers to use in tobacco and insurance litigation. So she experimented with substitute teaching and discovered she had a flair for working with children. 

Goodrich, who minored in German and completed her Jepson internship with Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart, Germany, is now reveling in her sixth year of teaching German at Pennridge High School in Perkasie, Pa., northwest of Philadelphia. Although Goodrich said that many people don’t appreciate the teaching profession, she couldn’t be happier with her decision. “If you put your heart and soul into teaching, you can make a real difference to kids and their parents,” she said. 

And that is what she is doing, not just as a German teacher, but also as the high school’s yearbook adviser, the coordinator of the high school’s German exchange program and, perhaps most of all, as the coach of the high school’s mock trial team. That’s leadership with a vision.

Leanna Bowman Goodrich, far left, with the Pennridge High School mock trial team