Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 25, 2003|Volume 31, Number 27

Travis LeBlanc, Kimberly Zelnick and Jonathan Kravis argued their way to the top, winning the American Bar Association's National Appellate Advocacy Competition.

Unique argument pays off for
winning Law School students

Sleepless nights, weeks of research and seemingly endless hours of questions and arguments paid off recently for a team of Law School students.

The three students -- Travis LeBlanc, Kimberly Zelnick and Jonathan Kravis -- won the American Bar Association's (ABA) National Appellate Advocacy Competition (NAAC) in Chicago on April 5. They also won the Best Brief award.

The NAAC is a tournament in which law students argue a hypothetical federal appeals court case, one side acting as the petitioner and one side acting as respondent. In each match, two-thirds of a team's score is determined by how well they make their points in oral arguments, while the other third is based on a written brief the team prepared before the competition. Four regional competitions were held around the country to select 16 teams to advance to the NAAC finals in Chicago.

The hypothetical case devised by the ABA was the appeal to the Supreme Court of the conviction of "Albert Ernest" for kidnapping and murdering a woman. The evidence that initially tied Ernest to the crime was turned up in a warrantless search that U.S. agents conducted in the Sunset Heights compound in Mexico, where Ernest's brother lived and Ernest himself had stayed for a time. The U.S. government believed that the cult that occupied the compound was planning a terrorist attack on the former Walker Air Force Base in New Mexico, and the search was intended to uncover evidence about this plot. During the trial, Ernest's attorney conceded that Ernest had kidnapped and raped the victim, but argued that he hadn't intentionally killed her.

The two questions being considered by the Supreme Court were whether the government needs a warrant to search a property outside the U.S. for foreign-intelligence gathering; and whether the attorney's concession of Ernest's guilt on a lesser offense constituted ineffective assistance of counsel.

In the weeks leading up to the finals, the team had spent time refining their arguments, practicing them over and over, and researching their competitors. They became immersed in the case.

"On the plane coming to Chicago," says LeBlanc, "Kim and I got into an argument on something that was really tangential. We both took our positions, and we were both adamant about our positions. The stewardess reminded us that there were other people on the plane, and in the same breath, she asked us if we were lawyers. ... But in the final round, I was asked a question where that conversation became the heart of my answer."

Throughout the tournament, the team members adjusted their approach based on their observations of the other teams and feedback from judges. That advice ranged from the trivial (they were told to always keep their coats buttoned) to the fundamental (treat the argument as a conversation, not a lecture).

"The whole thing was a very rich and layered experience in the sense that we were learning from each other, from other teams, from judges," says Kravis. "But we were also learning more substance as time went by." Within each match, they tailored their arguments to suit what the judges seemed interested in.

The Yale team did have one constant advantage from round to round. Their written brief received the highest score in the competition, meaning that they entered each match a few points ahead. Kravis called it "the gift that keeps on giving."

In the quarterfinals, however, the gift almost turned against them. One judge marked their score for the oral component of the competition drastically lower than any of his benchmates. Zelnick explains what happened: "[The judge] thought the competition should be about the oral component and not the brief. Consequently he felt when he was judging teams he wanted to make the distinction very, very clear." The Yale team won anyway, though by less than half a point, and advanced to the semifinals.

Yale beat Baylor on April 4 to move on to the final round on April 5 against a team from the University of Texas. That evening, "Jon and I were exhausted," says LeBlanc. "We wanted to go to bed, and Kim was not letting us. ... We were going to research those judges. Once we researched those judges, we were going to read the Texas brief. And then we were going to print out any important cases, just to refresh our memory."

Zelnick stayed up late that night working on refocusing their arguments based on what had and hadn't worked in earlier rounds. "That morning, bright and early," recalls LeBlanc, "Kim just storms into our room ... and she says, 'I figured it out.' And she's got these notepads, and she's got notes written on them. And she says, 'You're going to say this, and you're gong to say this.'"

The final round was judged on the oral component alone; the brief could no longer help them. All three members of the team were able to sit at the same table for the first time. Although only Kravis and LeBlanc actually spoke, the three exchanged notes and plotted their argument.

The Yale team spoke first, acting as petitioner. Kravis rose to face a bench of five distinguished attorneys, including a former governor of Illinois. "That moment was the most nervous that I had ever been in my entire life," says Kravis. "I had to pause in my sentences because I couldn't catch my breath."

Kravis had been through the case dozens of times, between competition and practice rounds. He presented arguments on the Fourth Amendment issue of whether the government needs a warrant to conduct a search outside the country for intelligence purposes.

He opened with a point he had led with throughout the competition, even though it had had only mixed success so far. "We were, so far as we know, the only team in the country ... to make the argument that the defendant didn't have standing to challenge the search in the case," says Kravis. "When we would make this argument in the regional competition, people would look at us like we were from Mars." But Kravis stuck with it, convinced that "this was how a real court would decide the case."

The judges didn't challenge Kravis on his argument about standing, and the rest of his time went smoothly, he recalls.

LeBlanc spoke next, addressing the Sixth Amendment question of whether the defendant in the case had received adequate representation. He enjoyed the exchange he had with the judges. "They were not just questioning you about things to trap you, but questioning you about real concerns they had with the case," he says.

When a member of the Texas team began to present the respondent's side, "The first question the judges asked her was, 'Does your client have standing?' And they gave her about two and a half minutes of questions on standing," says Kravis, noting that the Texas team had some trouble responding to Yale's unique argument.

While Texas spoke, the Yale team listened and planned their short rebuttal, which would be their last chance to impress their most important points on the judges. Zelnick sketched out a Sixth Amendment argument for LeBlanc to deliver. They wanted to distinguish between two standards for what constitutes inadequate representation, and show that this case fell under the stricter one. In addition to making this technical point, they aimed to get the judges thinking about hypotheticals favorable to their side.

Zelnick recalls, "Travis got up there to do the rebuttal and that's when I felt it all came together in a really great way. We were able to really make our points, and I felt that the judges were listening and they were responding."

Kravis adds, "The finals was the moment when our substantive preparation paid off the most. ... We had gone down all the dark side alleys of the case and found the tangential cases and the things that fill in the background picture of the law surrounding the case."

After 11 intense rounds of competition in addition to hours of practice, Kravis and Zelnik say they are relieved never to have to argue this hypothetical case again. But LeBlanc adds, "They're a lot less tolerant of it than I am. I'll argue it again."

-- By Jonathan Weisberg

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