Competitive Advocacy Program

California Western’s Competitive Advocacy Program (CAP) has already had some early success in 2022!

Our Jessup Appellate Team continued to show that our students can go head-to-head with any law school out there! 87 law schools from across the country entered the preliminary rounds of The Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition and Cal Western’s team won their way into the Final National Round of the top 32 law schools based on oral arguments! It should be noted that they advanced as the 18th best team after pre-lims. Even more impressive though was that their written skills earned them 7th place among Best Memorials (briefs) out of all 87 schools.

The Jessup student team members were Mathew Halverson, Maliat Chowdhury, Justine Berard, Chelsey Barkley, and Alexis Garcia. They were coached by Professor William Aceves, Professor Emerita Bobbie Thyfault, and CWSL alumni Kate Clark, Sahar Karimi, and Eli Gaglio.

Our Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Teams also had an impressive spring season. For the second year in a row, Cal Western was the ABA Regional Negotiation Champion and advanced to the National Competition. At Nationals they put in a strong effort and missed advancing to the top 8 teams by just 1 judge’s ballot.

Our ADR teams also advanced to the final round of two other national competitions this past spring. Our students came in 2nd place at Southwestern Law School’s National Negotiation Tournament. Cal Western also had teams come in 2nd place and 3rd place at the inaugural Tulane International Futbol Negotiation Competition. The ADR student team members were Samuel Eggleton, Alexandria Loveless, Kelli McTague, Sara Berry, Arya Sadighian, Katie Wotherspoon, Amy Lam, and Susie Gonzales-McCaulley. They were coached by Dan Rawlins and CWSL alumni Juan Larios & Michelle Kellogg.

Last but not least and for the first time in years, our Trial Teams advanced to the final rounds in both the Texas Young Lawyers Association (TYLA) Regional Competition and the American Association for Justice (AAJ) Regional Competition. The final round for each competition was so close that they were both decided by a single judge’s ballot. In both final rounds the school we just barely lost to was UCLA, who ultimately went on to become national champions for both competitions.

These trial team student team members were Anthony Hernandez, Hannah Bushyeager, Amanda Chavez, Kamil Robinson, Jazmin Luna, Alexis Holbrook, and Connor Er. They were coached by CWSL alumni Jason Conge, Chris Lee, Dan Korchnoy, and Javier Rios.

The advocacy teams are just starting their fall competition schedules and we have no doubt that there will be many more trophies brought home in 2022!

If you would like more info about CAP or want to learn more ways that you can support the advocacy students’ efforts, please feel free to reach out to Paul Parisi at PParisi@cwsl.edu.