Trial team log day four

[nagi_schwarz]

So we lost our round today. I will be the first to admit that I wanted to advance, but we lost to a good team. I will also admit that I totally consoled myself with Merlin.

I think - and Melilli seemed to agree that this was my best trial yet. We went up against a talented team. The two lawyers were very nice, and we had a cordial pretrial conference. The girl who opened was amazing and I thought she was the better of the two. Vanessa's opening was splendid and helped us win a lot of objections later on, which was awesome. The first direct was straightforward enough, but the first cross was a nightmare. The witness fought on everything and even the judge looked annoyed with her. Maybe Vanessa could have gone to the judge sooner to get her under control, but Vanessa handled her well. I got flustered on cross and only realized what I should have done after the break, but I made it through. We owned pretty hard on the second half, and I pretty sure that was my best closing ever. We did well ok objections and managed to keep our cool when we lost an objection.

We barely had time to get in for lunch, and then when they announced the first advancing team, it was the team we'd gone against, so we knew that we hadn't made it through. But we fought hard, and that's what counts.

After lunch we came back to the hotel and wondered about what to do with our free day and for dinner and other things, and then we split up. Chelsea was full of awesome and let me borrow her laptop so I could watch Merlin. I even got Vanessa on my side - Chelsea looks like Lady Morgana.

So this week's episode of Merlin was both amazing and disappointing. There was some brilliant acting by Bradley James as Arthur. Kid just broke my heart when he spoke of his mother and was crying at the end. Colin Morgan made me want to give Merlin all kinds of hugs when, for one second, it looked like Arthur might be okay about magic. And again at the end when he had such a tearful smile as Arthur thanked Merlin for helping Arthur realize magic is evil. But then at the end Merlin hardly seemed bothered by the fact that he had betrayed his own kind over again. The way he always seems to end up smiling and laughing with Gaius at the end seems to rob Merlin's character of a certain depth. Of course, the ads for next week's episode look awesome because Merlin finally gets some smoochies, but I'm worried it will fall flat at the end as well. Still, my boys cheered me up, and I'm going to go continue to console myself with fangirl fun.

We were trained well, we did our best, and the rest was judge subjectivity. I gained a lot from this experience and am no longer sure I really want to be a litigator. It's draining. But we were team J and we fought hard. Now we can only hope we make it home.

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