The Robert C. Khayat Law Center is shown last week. Photo: Phillip Waller, The Daily Mississippian
Third-year law students at The University of Mississippi will have the experience of representing actual clients within the Mississippi Court of Appeals today in Starkville at Mississippi State University.
Working within The University of Mississippi’s Criminal Appeals Clinic, the students will receive the opportunity to argue on behalf of incarcerated individuals. The Ole Miss Criminal Appeals Clinic is one of two of its kind within the southern part of the country.
This experience is one that practicing lawyers only get to have once or twice in their careers, according to Phillip Broadhead, clinical professor of law and director of the Criminal Appeals Clinic.
“As a ‘capstone’ course of study, clinics extend a law student’s education to bridge the gap between studying the law in a passive setting and becoming a lawyer in the real world,” Broadhead said.
Law students Stephanie Brown of Jackson and Rhodes Berry of Columbus, Ga., will be arguing the case of Eddie Joseph Brown v. State of Mississippi.
“Preparation and participation in this oral argument has given me a real-world perspective of what lawyers actually do,” Stephanie Brown said. “Quite often, people think of lawyers as wholesale provider of all things related to law. Nevertheless, lawyers generally specialize in key areas of legal practice, and appellate advocacy is a true specialization.”
While excited about the opportunity, which Brown describes as the first that she has had of this magnitude and prestige, Brown also described the difficulty of preparing for the case.
“Although I have a great deal of experience with public speaking, nothing can prepare you for this other than sound preparation and an experience coach who can guide you on how to be organized, prepared, while also mastering the ability to think on your feet, literally,” she said. “Oral argument is an art which takes time and effort to master.”
Law students Kimberly-Joy Lockley of Hattiesburg and Marcus Williams of Jackson will be arguing the case of Christopher Brown v. State of Mississippi.
“Rather than working hypothetical situations in class, the clinic allows students to work on real people’s problems and at least attempt to help them,” Lockley said.
Clinics mean to benefit not only the students but also the public, according to Broadhead.
“Clinics also strive to provide a service to the bench and bar that aids the public and, hopefully, improves the quality of legal representation in the future,” Broadhead said. “Students who participate in law clinics uniformly say that working as a lawyer on pending cases under the guidance of an experienced professor was the best part of their law school education.”
In preparation for the trials, law students Zachary Atwood, Ashlee Drake Berry, Laura Gullett and Cody Layton provided the briefs on behalf of the clients being represented.
Brown and Berry will argue on behalf of Eddie Joseph Brown at 1 p.m. Lockley and Williams will argue on behalf of Christopher Brown at 2:30 p.m. Both criminal appeals will be held in a three-member panel of court at the Hunter Henry Center on the Mississippi State University campus.
— Katherine Campbell
klcampb5@go.olemiss.edu
