Are you interested in the American judicial system? Do you aspire to become a lawyer? Or are you just looking for something to do on Tuesday afternoons? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then join Whitman’s Pre-Law Club. We meet every Tuesday from 2:40 to 3:20 in room 617, and everyone is welcome — from the experienced attorney to the novice.

If you have never heard of Pre-Law Club, it is because we are relatively new and used to go by a different name. To give you a quick history of the club, we had our first meeting in January, 2017 under the advisorship of Mrs. Cymbalista. However, back then we were known as Mock Trial Club. The objectives of the club were solely to put on mock trials for intra-school competition. For those of you who do not know, a mock trial is when students assume the roles of lawyers, judges, witnesses, jury members, court stenographers, and bailiffs to perform criminal or civil trials. If you have taken Student Court, the club was similar to the class. We continued on this path for a few meetings, but then we found an attorney who wanted to work with us, and then the club’s horizons greatly expanded.

The attorney was Mr. Allan Hecht. If his name sounds familiar, that is because he is the teacher of Honors Leadership. Mr. Hecht is both a practicing attorney and a law school professor. He coached the Moot Court Team at Touro Law School, and he brought them from a team who could barely assemble an opening statement to fifteenth in the nation. Moot court is different from mock trial in that there are no witnesses or jury members — just attorneys and judges. The Supreme Court can be considered moot court. Mr. Hecht offered himself to coach us for Long Island’s pre-collegiate moot court competition next fall.

It is here where the club splintered into three tenets: mock trial, moot court, and legal studies. Now that Mr. Hecht would be preparing us for moot court competition, we could not go by the name Mock Trial Club anymore. And since we planned to still hold intra-school mock trials for fun, we could not simply go by Moot Court Club. Since there was an element of legal studies through guest speakers, we decided that the best name to most accurately represent us was Pre-Law Club.

Pre-Law Club Secretary Asma Halimi said that “Pre-Law Club has greatly enriched my knowledge of law and I look forward to the knowledge to come.” Vice President Andrew Harrigan said that he is he most looking forward to “preparing for competition with Mr. Hecht.” Treasurer Meghan Kramer is just excited about the all “the possibilities the club has in store.”

There is an exciting future before Pre-Law Club, with competition and fun just around the corner. And with that, we’ll see you in court.