Takes Home Coveted Marcus G. Christ Trophy
 
(Mineola, NY) A team of high school students from Massapequa High School beat out 44 other high school teams to win the Nassau County Championship in the 2012 New York State Mock Trial Tournament, announced Susan Katz Richman, President of the Nassau County Bar Association, which coordinates the annual student competition in Nassau. The team was led by Teacher Coach Dan Bachman with attorney Brian Draper, a volunteer attorney-advisor for the team.
           
The Mock Trial Tournament is the largest competition in the state that pits high school students arguing a real case in a real courtroom, and Nassau has the largest single-county tournament in the state. This year, 121 attorneys and judges volunteered and more than 500 students from 45 high schools competed in 77 trials.
           
Nassau County Bar Association attorneys and judges volunteer as team attorney-advisors and trial judges to provide students with hands-on opportunities to further their understanding of the law, court procedures and the legal system while honing their speaking, listening, reading and reasoning skills. They advise and counsel student teams in trial techniques and court procedures as they prepare to prosecute,  defend, and act as witnesses in a fictional case provided by the state bar.

Each team has a turn at representing either the prosecution or the defendant side of the criminal case. The following week, the teams argue the other side of the case against different opponents and before different judges. Sitting judges, attorneys and other NCBA members who volunteer to preside over the trials evaluate the students’ performance, and the winning teams advance up the Tournament ladder until a winner is declared. In the Long Island Regional competition in April, Nassau Champions Massapequa High School lost to Suffolk Champion William Floyd High School, which will now go on to compete in the state finals in Albany.
           
The Nassau County High School Mock Trial Tournament is jointly sponsored by the Nassau County Bar Association and the Nassau County Court System. Attorneys Marilyn Genoa, Jeffrey Goodstein and Hon. John G. Marks co-chair the program, which is coordinated by NCBA’s Caryle Katz.
 
Nassau County Bar Association
Founded in 1899, the Nassau County Bar Association, with a membership of nearly 6,000 private and public attorneys, judges, legal educators and law students, is the largest suburban bar association in the country. NCBA demonstrates its commitment to the community by offering a variety of services for the public, including lawyer referral services, senior citizen and mortgage foreclosure clinics, judicial screening, public education programs and support for the Volunteer Lawyers Project, which provides much-needed free legal services for the indigent of Nassau County. The WE CARE Fund, the NCBA’s charitable arm, assists children, the elderly and others in need, through countless projects and donations.  For more information, call (516) 747-4070 (language translation available), email info@nassaubar.org, or visit www.nassaubar.org.