Sum "Mediate This" Mehrnama

Apologies for the delay between posts. Truth is, I'm really not as exciting as some of you might think (which means I'm not exciting at all). I also haven't really had any opinionated analysis to make about any recent events. Well, aside from my displeasure at the constant screw ups by the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Selection Committee, which can be read at Paymon's Sports Blog.

Aside from that, I've been swamped with law school, my application for the Virginia Bar, and job applications. It's also been a rough few months on a personal level, but no, none of you shall get a sneak peak into that (I'm such a jerk, hehehe). :-)

Well, I guess one exciting/interesting thing did occur recently. I had the honor of representing my law school at the Regional level of the American Bar Association's Representation in Mediation competition. It is an interesting competition where teams from various law schools compete against each other in a simulated 75-minute mediation session. Each team has 2 members, one who portrays a client and the other who portrays the attorney. A neutral third party serves as the mediator while 3 judges observe and score the teams. The goal is to be collaborative, always keeping your interests and the opposition's interests in mind along with any joint interests, while at the same time not giving up too much during the mediation/negotiation. It is akin to the more traditional moot court competitions that law schools like so much (aka, the varsity sport of law school), but with a greater emphasis on collaboration and conciliation as opposed to bitter debate.

The Regional competition is a 2-day event, with day one consisting of 2 rounds. Then, the top 2 teams from the first day advance to the final round, which takes place the following day. After a relatively easy first round, my partner and I ran into the team from the evil entity that is Georgetown University. Unfortunately for them, nobody seemed to have given them the memo that this is a collaborative competition. Unfortunately for me, one of the their team members practically shouted the entire time, thus giving me a massive headache. Plus, I couldn't take any Advil afterwards since the competition was held during the first few days of the Baha'i Fast.

Well, headache or no headache, my teammate, Gabby Mulnick, and I received wonderful news about an hour after round 2. Our efforts had won us the top overall ranking after the first day! That gave us a spot in the finals against the #2 team, from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego (They had a "scheduling conflict" with their own Regional tournament, so they got to compete in ours). Both teams received the problem set for the championship round at that point.

My teammate and I are on the left. The opposition are the 2 guys on the right.

Photo Credit: Samuel Jackson (No, not that Samuel Jackson)

The final promised to be highly competitive, and the team from Thomas Jefferson was by far the best team we had met over the 2-day event. However, ultimately Gabby and I pulled out the win!! Of course, this just means even more work for me during my final semester of law school. Gabby and I will be participating in the National competition at the end of April.

That's pretty much it for now. Until next time...