Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Tue, 08 Dec 2015
Edie Swann
Teams from the Liberty University School of Law took second and fourth place in the American Bar Association's (ABA) Negotiation Tournament for Region 3 held at Liberty University on November 7-8, 2015. Law schools from Virginia, Maryland, Michigan and D.C. were all invited to participate in this prestigious annual tournament, which provides a means for law students to practice and improve their negotiating skills. The competition simulates legal negotiations in which law students, acting as lawyers, negotiate a series of legal issues.
By placing second, one Liberty team secured a coveted invitation to the national tournament that will be held in San Diego in February. Liberty University was the only school from Virginia, Maryland, or D.C. to get one of only 24 nationwide invitations to the ABA national tournament. Liberty narrowly lost to Michigan State in the final round, and both schools will represent this Region at the national championship. “For Liberty Law to have two teams in the final round is quite an accomplishment,” said B. Keith Faulkner, dean of Liberty’s School of Law.
Professor Joel Hesch coached the Liberty teams and praised them for their excellent negotiating and researching skills. According to Hesch, “What makes our invitation to the national tournament so remarkable is that Liberty has one of the smallest class sizes of all the schools and therefore is competing against much larger schools.” He cited the example of American, George Washington and Georgetown who all have total law student bodies of over 1,000 compared to Liberty’s student body of approximately 200. Hesch credits Liberty’s exceptional skills program with providing students with the tools to successfully compete against any law school in the nation. Hesch added, “Our students exhibited great teamwork and flexibility. Each of these students will make outstanding attorneys when they graduate. I could not have been more proud of them.”
Each year the American Bar Association holds national law school competitions for all of the schools in the nation to compete against each other. For the Negotiations Competition for Region 3, each law school is allowed to send two teams consisting of two students. The following schools participated in the tournament: American University, Drexel University School of Law, George Mason University School of Law, George Washington University Law School, Georgetown University Law, University of Maryland, Michigan State University College of Law, Regent University School of Law, University of Richmond School of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law, West Virginia University College of Law, William & Mary Law School, and Liberty University School of Law.
This was also the first time that the ABA requested Liberty University to host the regional competition. Liberty representatives expressed that they were delighted to host the tournament and were impressed that this particular event brings in 60 attorneys and judges from around the state to judge the competition. To ensure fairness to all competitors, the ABA rules prohibit judges from knowing the home school of the competitors until the tournament is over.
Three weeks before the competition, each school is assigned one side of a problem and a client to represent. The simulated problem consists of a common set of facts known by all participants and confidential information known only to the participants representing a particular side. All of the simulations deal with the same general topic, but the negotiation situation varies with each round and level of the competition. During the competition, students are judged by how well they performed in a variety of areas including teamwork, obtaining the client's objectives, ability to maintain appropriate control over the negotiations, and reaching a positive result in the time allotted. The negotiation itself lasts 50 minutes, followed by 10-minute self-analysis of the students’ performance. The teams are judged by practicing attorneys with extensive negotiation experience and who are familiar with the area of law related to the problem. At the end of two rounds, the top four highest-ranking teams advance to a final round the next day.
The team of Katerina Silcox and Christopher Collins, both third-year students, were tournament runners-up and will head to San Diego for the national finals. Placing fourth was the Mia Yugo and Alexandra Hubbard team, also third-year students.
This represents the sixth time in the past nine years that Liberty has advanced to the ABA nationals for the negotiation competition. Liberty has always finished in the top five at this regional competition, has won this it three times, and has been runner-up three times in that time span.