porary placement and moving every two to three days until they could find him a permanent home,” she says. “I had to grow up real quick.” David is now a sophomore at UC Berkeley. Dorman Colby has since fostered
two other children with her fiancé and plans on more. She has already received awards from the Youth Law Center and Ms. JD, a nonprofit that promotes women in law school and the legal profession.
“I’m grateful that my background helps me navigate very different communities,” she says. “It’s rewarding to help connect groups that struggle to communicate with each other.” —Andrew Cohen
Top Gun Champ Helps Trial Advocacy Program Soar
Jim block
W
hen Collin Tierney ’14 won Baylor Law School’s 2013 Top Gun National Mock Trial Competition, it wasn’t just a solo victory. It was also another triumph for teamwork—the hallmark of the student-led Board of Advocates, which oversees Boalt’s surging skills competition programs. Some law schools field the same team in every competition, to boost their odds of winning. Not Boalt. “We’re in eight competitions a year,” says Tierney, “and we never send anyone twice. We give more people experience than any other program, so we help as many as possible become as good as possible.” That also creates a culture of camaraderie. “We’re not in it to beat each other, but to help each other.” It’s working. Boalt made the finals of 2013’s National Trial Competition, and the year before, Grace Yang ’12 was named best oral advocate at the National Moot Court Competition. Tierney credits much of that success to the trial program’s 15 volunteer coaches, recruited and led by Spencer Pahlke ’07 (see page 58). “We have two or three coaches per team,” Tierney says, “all seasoned attorneys—a big advantage.” Another asset: internal scrimmages, team against team, with group feedback. “We get a
full jury box,” he says, “and by the end of a three-hour trial, there’s a Google doc with dozens of pages of notes.” The team-centered training helped Tierney beat 15 other elite competitors to claim Top Gun’s $10,000 first prize. The pressure was intensely realistic. Unlike most competitions, Top Gun gives participants only 24 hours to review the case file —hundreds of pages—before opening rounds. That heightens the stress, Tierney says, but also mirrors reallife practice, where attorneys are often handed cases on short notice. Another authentic Top Gun touch
was a roster of realistic witnesses that competitors call—or not—as they choose. After each day’s competition, the pressure ramps up as more material is added to the case’s fact pattern. Tierney worked last summer in the Contra Costa County Public Defender’s Office. This year, after graduating, he heads to Minneapolis to work as a public defender. Did the Top Gun triumph help him land the position? “I don’t know,” he shrugs, “but it sure helped prepare me for it, and I’m excited to use those skills in the real world, helping real people.”
HIGH FLYER:
Collin Tierney ’14