Pre-Trial Oral Argument

Each Empire trial begins with a Pre-Trial Oral Argument (POA) that lasts approximately 8 minutes and concludes before the main trial. The POA will involve either (i) potential evidence or testimony in the main trial with the judge’s ruling determining its admissibility, or (ii) an issue involving constitutional law that shares facts with the main trial, but is not legally related to it.

Past POA Issues 

Prior POA issues include argument over the following:

  • Admissibility of a defendant’s cell phone site location data in a federal terrorism prosecution (motion to suppress);

  • Admissibility of a defendant’s journal, written while in prison, in a §1983 civil rights case (motion in limine);

  • The right of a public university to restrict a white nationalist from speaking on campus (temporary restraining order);

  • Admissibility of part of an expert scientist’s opinion (Daubert motion).

Pre-Trial Oral Argument (POA) 101


Timing 

Each side has 8 minutes for their oral argument, plus 2 minutes of courtesy time that may be granted by the Court.

Parties are given 45 seconds of uninterrupted time in which they can summarize their argument. Judges are free to ask questions after 45 seconds has expired.

Materials

In preparing their argument, advocates will be given the following:

  • Exhibit in question (where applicable);

  • Motion raised by the moving party;

  • Opposition to movant’s motion;

  • Relevant case law – Includes excerpts from judicial opinions.

The problem is closed universe. A team may not introduce outside statutes or case law.


Impact of Ruling

After oral arguments, the judge will take a break no longer than 3 minutes to evaluate the presentations and weigh the legal issues.

The judge will then announce a ruling. Where the issue involves a piece of evidence in the case, the judge’s ruling will impact the admissibility of the exhibit at trial. Where the issue is unrelated to an exhibit, then the trial will simply proceed.

After the POA, Guest Witnesses (GWs) and GW directing attorneys will be asked to return to the courtroom.

Responsibility of POA Attorney

One student from your team will present the POA prior to the start of the regular trial.

The POA Attorney is required to conduct at least one examination (a direct or cross), in addition to delivering the oral argument.

They may not direct the GW on the side in which they’re delivering the POA.


Scoring the POA 

The POA is an intellectually rigorous part of the Empire competition, which requires students to navigate a dense set of materials and respond to intense judicial questioning. As a result, we felt that the POA should count for a larger percentage of a team’s score than a standard 10 point category. This year, each team’s POA score will be multiplied by 2. So if a student receives a 7 from a judge, it will actually contribute 14 points to a team’s ballot.

Interested in learning more?

PRE-TRIAL ORAL ARGUMENT TIMING

Each student has up to eight minutes to present their argument. Any time reserved for rebuttal will be deducted from the eight minutes. Time elapsed during Presider questions is included in this time limit.

Uninterrupted time

Each party will have forty-five seconds of uninterrupted time at the start of their argument, after which the Presider will question the advocate. This uninterrupted time is included in the eight-minute time limit.

Rebuttal

The moving party may reserve up to three minutes for a rebuttal, but is not required to do so. If the moving party wishes to save time for rebuttal, they must announce to the Presider the specific amount of time they would like prior to starting their argument.

Courtesy time

Once time expires, the Court may grant each side additional time, beyond the prescribed eight minutes, in accordance with the following rules:

    i. If time is called and the moving party is in the middle of making an argument, or a judge is in the middle of asking a question, a courtesy period of up to one minute may be requested by the advocate or invoked by the Court. The Court is not required to grant the advocate’s request.

    ii. Any time that is used by the moving party during the courtesy period shall be added to the amount of time allotted for the responding party’s argument.

    iii. The responding party is given the same option of requesting a courtesy period.

    iv. Any time that is used by the responding party during the courtesy period shall be added to the amount of time allotted for the moving party’s rebuttal.

    v. Additional courtesy time may not be granted during the moving party’s rebuttal.

ATTORNEY ROLE ASSIGNMENT

In designing this set of rules, our goal is simple: to ensure that teams are dividing the workload evenly amongst their attorneys. We believe that this is crucial from both an educational and competitive perspective.

As you review the rules, keep these definitions in mind:

Speech refers to the pre-trial oral argument (“POA”), opening statement or closing argument.

Exam refers to either a direct or a cross examination.

3 Attorneys

If you opt to field 3 attorneys in a trial, then the rules are easy: each attorney will be responsible for delivering one speech, one direct exam and one cross exam. There is no flexibility.

4 Attorneys

If you decide to field 4 attorneys in a trial, it gets a bit more complicated and you have more to consider:

    1. An attorney cannot perform more than one speech per side.This means that 3 of your attorneys will deliver a speech on a given side, and 1 attorney will not. Please note that this rule does not preclude an attorney from giving a speech on both the plaintiff/prosecution and the defense.

    2. The attorney who does not give a speech must conduct one direct and one cross–no more, no less. The purpose of this rule, like the following rule, is to distribute the workload. One attorney cannot be responsible for all direct or cross examinations in exchange for not performing a speech, for instance.

    3. Each attorney must conduct at least one exam. A speech-giving attorney may not focus solely on their speech.

    4. No attorney may conduct more than one direct or more than one cross. You can’t have a “specialist” who handles multiple directs or multiple crosses.

    5. The attorney delivering the pre-trial oral argument (“POA”) may not direct the Guest Witness (“GW”). This is because the GW will be preparing their direct exam with their directing attorney during the POA. Hence, it’s not physically possible for the GW directing attorney to also do the POA!

Confused yet? Don’t be. Your final assignments will look like this:

A = Attorney
Speech = POA, Opening, Closing

3 Attorneys

A1 A2 A3
Speech Speech Speech
Direct Direct Direct
Cross Cross Cross

4 Attorneys

A1 A2 A3 A4
Speech Speech Speech Direct
Direct Direct or Cross Direct or Cross Cross
Cross