Boyd team places second in the national ABA Client Counseling Competition

Boyd students Gordon Goolsby and Michael Hazen won second place at the national ABA Client Competition in White Plains, New York this weekend. After winning first place in the regional competition in Hawaii, the Boyd team went on to compete at the nationals. The regional competition began with 137 teams competing last month, with 15 teams from all over the U.S. and Canada going on to nationals. Professors Rebecca Scharf and Jean Sternlight co-coached the Boyd team. This is the fourth year in a row that a Boyd team has won either first, second or third place at the nationals.

The competition topic was civil rights. The students played the roles of two lawyers interviewing a series of clients who had concerns relating to civil rights. At the national competition the students participated in five rounds of such interviews. For example, they interviewed a man who was concerned that his children’s school was requiring the kids to learn about gay families; a woman who claimed she had been raped by a police officer, an Arab-American who said he had been subjected to ethnic profiling, and two women who claimed that a local department store was discriminating against minority customers.

For more information about the regional competition, click here