Student lawyer shines at mock trial

Kenneth Mac Neal, 17, hasn’t been to law school, and he hasn’t ever taken the bar exam. But he was recently recognized for his burgeoning legal skills during the Los Angeles County mock trial competition held by the Constitutional Rights Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles.

Kenneth, a senior at St. Francis High School in La Cañada Flintridge, took home an “Outstanding Defense Pretrial Attorney” award for his role in the fictional murder case that was the focus of this year’s competition. Kenneth was one of a handful of the approximately 700 participating students to receive an award in this year’s competition, which was held in November at Los Angeles Superior Court.

It was the 30th year that the Constitutional Rights Foundation has held the competition, in which school-based teams of students act as lawyers and argue a fictitious case in front of judges who are lawyers — or sometimes actual judges.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell, who has a son at St. Francis High School, acted as the coach for Kenneth’s team.

St. Francis High School started participating in the mock-trial competition last year. Many students at St. Francis are interested in the law, and the competition creates an opportunity for students to practice public speaking skills, said Father Gregory Coiro, the school’s chaplain.

Kenneth’s award was quite an accomplishment, and hopefully it will help keep students interested in mock trial, Coiro said.

When the team was started at St. Francis last year, Kenneth, a La Crescenta resident, was one of the first students who signed up. He was attracted to the notion of trying to express facts and interpretations of facts as eloquently as possible.

“In mock trial, all the facts are there in front of you,” Kenneth said. “It’s not about what you know, it’s about how you express it.”

Kenneth had such a good time during his first year on the mock trial team, he spent two weeks over the summer at a Baltimore legal conference for youth that included a mock trial component.

When his senior year began this fall, he was eager to get back to legal interpretation.

In this year’s mock case, a celebrity movie producer was shot in his home and the prosecution was arguing that the producer’s friend who lived in his pool house was the killer. The defense contended that a spurned lover was the real culprit.

Every school’s team took a turn arguing each side of the case. Kenneth acted as the prosecution’s pretrial attorney first, and he wasn’t entirely prepared, he said. His delivery was shaky and he had to continually shuffle his papers since his notes weren’t in the correct order. He had about a week to revise and reorder his notes, and his presentation was more solid when he gave the defense pretrial attorney’s points. That second round of preparation may have helped distinguish his second presentation, Kenneth said.

As the defense pretrial attorney, Kenneth was asking that the judge rule as inadmissible the results of a brain scan akin to a lie detector test that was given to the defendant.

“It’s really a dialogue between the judge and the pretrial attorney,” Kenneth said about the role of the pretrial attorney. “It’s a battle of wills.”

There’s a real adrenaline rush in being put on the spot by the judge’s questions and needing to come up with something to say that’s both relevant and intelligent, Kenneth said.

Kenneth’s mother said she could have seen the recognition coming.

“He’s been arguing with me since he was 2,” Michele Mac Neal said.

Kenneth said he plans to study business in college and get a law degree.