For the second year, our Magistrates Mock trial students are through to the National Final which will be held in Birmingham on the 6th June at the Victoria Law Courts.  It is a fantastic achievement for the 13 strong team who are becoming quite the young professionals in the legal field!

To celebrate their success in a new way, this half term, they were invited to be guests at Kings Lynn’s Speedway. Buster Chapman, director of Speedway is an advocate of our young students and the hard work that they put in and gave them the opportunity to spend the evening in one of their Hospitality Lounges.

Although most of the students were new to Speedway, the adrenaline soon kicked in once they were invited to stand in the middle of the circuit.

They are most grateful to Buster for the opportunity and would also like to thank Mr Bland for his part in the organisation of the evening.

   

Birmingham: Yet again we had made it through the first two rounds of the Magistrates Mock Trial competition. For months, we had been working hard on our cases; giving up two lunchtimes a week, Fridays after school, and even some of our holidays. However, after all of our months of practising, the time had come - the national final. 

We travelled down to Birmingham on the Friday – the day before the competition, but before we departed we spent the morning doing a bit of practice, to ensure we were going to do everything the next day at our very best as we didn't want to leave the courtroom with any regrets. When our last moments of practice were done we got on the minibus and travelled down to Birmingham. Once we arrived we all got checked into our hotel rooms and got ready before dinner. We had a lovely meal together as a group before making time for one very final evening practice. However, early nights were needed for everyone because the next day was the day we'd all been working towards.

Competition day: We woke up nice and early, feeling refreshed and ready for the day ahead but as we ate our breakfast, the realisation that this was it, began to sink in. Final room checks were completed, and we went on our way to compete at the Victoria Law Courts in Birmingham.

Once we arrived at the court and registered, we found an empty courtroom to do some last minute practice before listening to the welcome speeches before the first case. Our prosecution team went up first. They were prosecuting against Pat Taylor who was accused of stealing a mobile phone. They delivered their case immaculately, with very few mistakes and were against Cox Green School who also gave a very good case. Although the prosecution had put their heart and soul into it, the verdict was 'not guilty'.

It was defence’s turn next. We were up against Wycombe High School. We fought, and put everything we had into our case, as we were desperate to get our defendant off, who we believed to be 'not guilty'. However, Wycombe also gave a very strong case, which lead to our defendant, Chris Bishop being found 'guilty' of criminal damage to a car.

We all left our courtrooms that day knowing we'd done everything we could have possibly done. Nearly six months of preparation had been leading up to this day. We sat anxiously and awaited the final results.

As we didn't place in first or second, we had to wait until Monday to find out our results. It was then that we found out that we came 4^th. This is an amazing achievement considering that the competition started with over 300 schools, and there were 16 schools who competed on the day. We all felt very proud of ourselves.

The whole experience was incredible. The Magistrates Mock trial has taught us all a lot more about the legal system in this country, which many young people don't understand. 

We would like to thank all our sponsors for enabling us to have an evening in a hotel which benefited us all, as if we left Kings Lynn on the Saturday morning, it would have been an incredibly early start for us, which would have lead to us all being very tired in court and not being able to fulfil our potential.

There is no way we would have ever got this far in the competition without our amazing teacher Miss Roberts. She has given up so much of her own time for us over the last few months, which we can't thank her enough for. Miss Roberts’ dedication is truly unbelievable and each and everyone of us is so grateful for everything she’s done for us. Words can't describe how thankful we are for being given this incredible opportunity.