In Fall 2019, the Quinnipiac Society for Dispute Resolution (SDR) with the support from the Center on Dispute Resolution began planning for hosting the ABA National Client Counseling Competition in during the Spring 2020 semester. This meant finding over 20 mock clients, booking rooms in the law school, organizing meals for incoming competitors, and recruiting local attorneys, judges, and mental health professionals to serve as competition judges.
When the COVID-19 virus caused law schools around the country to close their campuses for the safety of the students, staff and faculty, SDR student officers, with Carolyn Wilkes Kaas, Associate Professor of Law, Co-Director of the DR Center, and Associate Dean of Experiential Education, began to brainstorm with the ABA ways to host this national competition online. The idea of hosting an online national competition via Zoom would give the student teams who had won their regional competitions the opportunity to compete for the national title, rather than cancel due to the pandemic.
Professor Kaas worked directly with the ABA to develop rules and formatting to provide both competitors and judges with the information they needed to hold this competition in this unprecedented time. Fortunately, competition judges, who had previously agreed to participate in the in-person competition, were quick to adapt to this new format and excited about the opportunity that SDR and the Center were offering future lawyers.
The virtual competition not only would provide some semblance of normalcy in these chaotic times, but also would give competitors the skills to work with clients on an online platform, something increasingly relevant in today’s world! Professor Kaas, SDR President Jessica McDade, JD '20, SDR Internal Competition Director Patrick Hoerle, JD '21, and DR Center Student Fellows Angela Tylock, JD '21 and Ashley Cervin, JD '21 led the conversion of the competition from an in-person event into an online contest.
The Client Counseling Competition requires that teams of two students work with a mock client to conduct an initial interview, in which they address both the legal and non-legal needs of the client. The competitors explain the attorney-client relationship, build rapport with their clients, determine client goals, and consider applicable law to develop various options for the client. Typically, the competition is structured so that the competitors are in a room with their client and 2-3 judges who students' skills in interviewing and counseling their client. Team coaches are also usually in the room, but must remain silent during the competition. Following their interview with the client, competitors engage in a post-consultation evaluation with each other to discuss what next steps to take with the client and what concerns they have.
To convert this face-to-face scenario into an online competition, for the preliminary round, competitors were asked to record themselves interviewing their client; the recordings were then sent to the judges; and the judging was done asynchronously. Each team faced challenges with how to create their recordings, given that COVID-19 social distancing guidelines prevented them from all being in the same room at the same time. Competitors used Zoom to hold 3-way video calls to meet with their client and complete this round of the competition.
Generally, in the preliminary round, competition rules require three client counseling sessions per team; that is, Team A meets separately to interview and advise clients X, Y, and Z . The sum of the scores from these three interviews is Team A’s preliminary round score. To adapt the competition to an online format, we decided that one of the interviews would be converted to a memo advising the clients in writing.
The semifinal round involved each of the qualifying teams recording just one client interview on Zoom and was judged synchronously. The Final Round was also conducted with the client, the competitors, and the judges all on the same Zoom call. Judges were muted, but watched the competition live.
After the competition was over the Center's Student Fellows interviewed judges, competitors, and team coaches about what worked well and what might be done differently next time. Competitors, judges and coaches all recommended, for example, requiring future ABA competitions to hold one round online to give competitors the skills to work with clients remotely, as this may become a standard part of the practice of law by the time they graduate.
This first online national competition went surprisingly well, and SDR and the Center look forward to hosting another national competition in the future, whether online or in-person. In the meantime, because the pandemic has yet to abate, the ABA has decided that its 2020-21 Client Counseling Competition will be entirely virtual. As Quinnipiac is the only law school with any experience hosting a virtual client counseling competition, its experience has become the template for host schools to follow this coming year.
