Actors Bring Mock Cases to Life During Law School 'Boot Camp'

The hottest acting roles in New Orleans every January just might be at Tulane Law School.The first week in January for the past six years is reserved for Intersession Boot Camp, a crash course the week before classes resume that jolts law students back into the business of learning to be lawyers. It gives them the chance to learn from attorneys and judges who travel to Tulane Law from around the country to create an intensive simulation of law practice in one of three alternative tracks:  civil litigation, criminal practice, and business transactions. Actors play a big part in boot camp, taking on roles of real-life witnesses, experts (some with attitudes), clients or other characters in the mock legal matters. Students learn how to ask questions in depositions, handle belligerent witnesses, and protect their own clients under questioning. The actors make cases come alive.Holly Rochelle, an actress from New Orleans, arrived on Monday to play the role of a pregnant inmate awaiting trial for a crime she did not commit, and meeting her ‘lawyer’ for the first time. During her interview with students in the criminal law track, she cried and demanded to know how old the students were and whether they’d ever tried a case before.

“She was great,” said Katherine Mattes, a law professor and the Director of Tulane’s Criminal Law Clinic.  “She really surprised them, and that’s good.”“I just get into the characters and try to live their reality for a little while,” Rochelle said. “If you were in jail and pregnant, wouldn’t you want to know if your lawyers had tried a case before? They all looked so young.”Then there was Mark Watson, an actor from Picayune, Miss., who played a role for the civil litigation track students – that of a bar owner who was about to be sued following a shooting at his establishment. Disregarding his potential liabilities, the bar owner at one point demands that his lawyers “make this thing go away” and in turn, sue the families of the shooter and victim because “they’re both bums.”Jim Sojka, an actor who has worked before with Tulane Law Clinic students, said he tries to listen, read the students and become very good at improvisation. “You have a great deal of material given to you to prepare you, but you have to do a lot of improv. It’s not easy but you never have a full and complete picture of the character so you have to go with it,” he said. “Sometimes, you can say things to rattle a student, see how they would react if it were real life.”