WILMINGTON – On most Fridays, the upper-level courtrooms in Wilmington’s Leonard L. Williams Justice Center are filled with people awaiting sentencing, along with all of the lawyers, clerks and other legal professionals attending a variety of criminal and civil matters.
Proceedings on the last Friday in February really didn’t look much different: Spectators lined the benches, listening quietly and intently to arguments made by prosecutors and defense attorneys grilling witnesses. The major difference was that those arguments weren’t being made by practicing members of the bar, but rather by well-studied local high school students competing in the 34th annual Delaware High School Mock Trial Competition.
“We tell them, if today’s the day that you decide you want to do this and that you want to be successful, you can absolutely do it and we’re going to show you how,” said Betsy Renzo, executive director at the nonprofit
Delaware Law Related Education Center.
Delaware’s robust legal scene offers an opportunity for aspiring students to pursue professional careers in their home state, Renzo explained. Those jobs are not limited to lawyers or judges, but can also include roles such as HR professionals, IT experts, social media managers, court reporters and more. More than 180 members of the Delaware Bench and Bar volunteer as coaches or judges in the contest, challenging students to present their legal cases while learning about trial rules and courtroom protocol.
“Especially for students who might have felt disenfranchised in their lives, law is the ultimate enfranchisement,” Renzo said. “It’s the ultimate profession for being able to make a change for yourself, for others, to be able to influence policy.”
A 2019 analysis by the
Delaware State Bar Association found the state’s legal industry contributed $2.4 billion to Delaware’s economy directly and indirectly. According to a
2023 report from the Delaware Department of Labor, the legal industry employs more than 5,200 people who earn an average salary of nearly $150,000.
Delaware’s legal community has found itself in the spotlight in recent years, as high-profile cases like those involving Fox News and Elon Musk’s Tesla have made headlines and, in the latter case, led to serious national criticism of the
First State’s corporate proceedings.
The state’s Court of Chancery, which has been in the crosshairs of some of those criticisms, has been described as one of the key reasons two-thirds of the country’s Fortune 500 companies incorporate in the First State, which in turn generates about one-third of the state’s annual operating revenue.
But for two days on Feb. 28 and March 1, dozens of members of the legal community, from Delaware Supreme Court Justice N. Christopher Griffiths and Family Court Judge James McGiffin to bailiffs volunteering their time, put those issues aside to spend some dedicated time supporting students who could one day become the next cohort of legal professionals.
Griffiths, who for years served as a coach to students participating in the mock trials competition, said he loves the program and seeing the students grow and watching others get more involved.
“It’s just great to see the bar supporting it,” he told Delaware Business Times. “My other thing, too, is in Kent and Sussex, we need more attorneys there. This is a great bridge to sort of help that problem.”
That idea aligns with the expansion of Wilmington University’s new law school: Focusing on professional development so that students stay in their home state.
“We want to have a more diverse legal community in Delaware,” said Veronica Finkelstein, who is teaching at Wilmington University and also working as a litigative consultant for the federal Department of Justice in Philadelphia. “The problem is not that there isn’t talent. The problem is encouraging people to stay.”
Later in courtroom 8B, where murder trials and other high-profile cases have been argued, Finkelstein’s team of Concord High School students were on a mission to make up for the team’s last place showing in the previous contest. Concord is one of a growing number of public district schools in the competition which has historically been more heavily attended by students from Delaware’s private and charter schools.
[caption id="attachment_470122" align="alignleft" width="197"]
Concord junior Lilly Fiorentino. | SUBMITTED PHOTO BY RENEE FIORENTINO[/caption]
“We did it as a joke at first,” said Concord junior Lilly Fiorentino, recalling the contest being pitched as a good club for teens who enjoy arguing after an impressively aggressive showing as a prosecutor grilling witnesses. “Now it’s serious.”
But by the end of the two-day competition, it was the team from Salesianum School that took home the top prize – a first time for the Sallies students. Their team will advance to finals and represent the First State at the National High School Mock Trial Championship in May in Phoenix, Arizona. Concord’s efforts did earn Fiorentino’s team a higher ranking, placing 14th out of 18 teams.
