Mock Trial is a club on Malvern’s campus where students collaborate and prepare for a fictional case. Students first prepare and then compete against other schools. Mr. Hill, the moderator of the mock trial club, has taken over the club recently.

“The case itself required careful, structured wording where the team had to not just defend the possibility of murder, but also the possibility of a hitman being hired,” Hill said.

Malvern’s defensive team recently won their case in their Mock Trial. In their tournament, they debated the innocence of a pizza shop owner who had been accused of hiring a hitman to assassinate one of their competitors. 

“Essentially, it was just three competing pizza chains. One who hired somebody to murder the other,” Hill said. 

The Mock Trial team, both defensive and prosecution, had to protect their point of view in the case. In this case, the team became witnesses and lawyers to the case itself, in which they were judged by an actual judge and a jury of professional lawyers.

Mock Trial allows students to grow in many different aspects of their personalities. 

“I think it’s super important because it has all of the skills that you guys need the rest of your life, like public speaking and legal reasoning, just sort of abstract stuff like that,”  Hill said.

Hill admires his students’ growth and success in skills they acquire from participating in Mock Trial. Students gather knowledge on many skills that will benefit Malvern students in the future. 

Matthew Balmer, a member of the class of 2026, experienced significant growth in his personality while participating in the Mock Trial. 

“It’s all a hard task to go and speak in front of the boardroom. So it’s really good practice for public speaking because I just had to get out there, and I had an opening statement memorized. I had to have my questions memorized; I was going to ask the witnesses, so that really trains you to be better at memorization and choose to be more comfortable speaking,” Balmer said.

Even with the added stress of stating your case, it has heightened the interest within law for the students.

Will Shuford, another student of the class of 2026, mentioned how the club has heightened his passion for studying law and is a great way to hang out with his friends and other Malvern students who share this passion.

“Probably just practice, hanging out with my friends in the club, but also competing is really fun. Putting all you’ve worked towards into a common goal to win the competition is really interesting,” Shuford said.

Mr. Hill’s driving passion for the Mock Trial club is inspiring students to pursue law in the future. His mission is to help people attain a better grasp of our society through law and by educating them on the process so they can navigate the world safely.

“The winnings are a nice side effect, right? But really, it’s about getting you guys into law, it’s the basis of our whole society,” Hill said.

The club has sparked a passion for law among the students, even beyond the Intro to Law curriculum. Previously, students would only have months to prepare a case while they were also studying the class curriculum during that period. 

“When I took over, I just thought that maybe we could look at expanding to students who didn’t take the Intro to Law class. And hopefully, build something where guys are doing this for three or four years by the time they graduate and we can really put up a good showing,” Hill said.

Malvern’s Mock Trial’s expansion has made it more accessible for people to become interested in the subject matter and the law. The Mock Trial club has formed a dedicated group of students eager to grow in their knowledge of the law.