Ready For Trial In Ten Days
By Daniel Westhoff
I signed up for Washburn Law Clinic hoping to get practical experience. I did get that experience, but much earlier in the semester than I had anticipated. Because I am interested in family law, I was happy to find that one of my cases involved the opposing party attempting to withdraw his consent to my client's adoption of his stepchild. I was, however, not happy to learn that the case was set for trial before a real judge in ten days. At that point I had no court experience and my only legal training consisted of two and a half years of trying to avoid the Socratic Method. When Professor Reynolds, my clinic supervisor, asked how I felt about trying a case so early in the semester, I was too afraid to say no.
My trial preparation started where every good lawyer should start— with the statutes. I poured over the adoption code and then the Kansas appellate cases interpreting it, to absorb all I could about the applicable law and how it all fit together. Then I read the case file a few times and began talking to my client and interviewing witnesses. It was surprising and helpful to me that a witness for the opposing party was willing to talk freely with me. Once the facts and the law were clear, I understood what I needed to prove in court. To start my final preparations, I wrote my closing argument. I laid out the law and argued how the facts supported my client and why the judge should not void the consent. I then wrote out questions for each witness to establish what I wanted to argue in my closing.
When the big day arrived, I found myself in the courthouse white knuckled and sick to my stomach. Although I was extremely stressed, when I got in court and started talking it all went away. In trial, I cross-examined two witnesses and presented a direct exam of three witnesses, including introduction of several documents. All the things I had learned the last ten days came back and all my preparation paid off. We won the case and I came away with a feeling of confidence that I could be an attorney. After two and a half years of law school, I was able to apply what I had learned to a real legal case and realized I can do this.
