Baylor Law team wins nation Client Counseling Competition

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - The Baylor Law Team are all smiles after winning first place at nationals for the 2023 Client Counseling Competition.

Law student, Emily Ullon, said she was overwhelmed with emotions.

“It just was super shocking. I was just in awe, and I don’t know if it really hit me,” said Ullon.

The members said it’s the first time Baylor won the national title.

“I find it really fun because I like what we do inside and outside the competition. I think it’s a good, little dry run of what you’re doing in real life once we graduate,” said Law student, Emma Scofield.

The competition has real life scenarios for students to break down.

The students said they’re given a “client” and must interview them based off a one sentence prompt.

Then, they ask targeted questions to pull out hidden information the client didn’t provide and give solutions.

Law student, Meghan Thomas, said the competition helps bring the humanity portion of the job, something she said isn’t always taught in law school.

“It’s easy to see the client as a fact pattern in which you would want to apply the law. But in reality, these are real people, facing real problems. We’re in a service industry, and we’re here to provide a service that helps them get out of what could potentially be one of the hardest moments of their life,” said Thomas.

The members said it takes much strategy to provide solutions on the fly.

“We have to get an idea of what their goals are and what their concerns are. Sometimes, they don’t even know what their biggest issue is if they’re not familiar with the law. It’s kind of our job to ask the right questions,” said Scofield.

The team recommends all law students to join.

They said even though the scenarios are fictional now, you could be dealing with some in future cases.

“The reality is, we’re going into the world with a robust amount of problems and we need to be equipped not only to analyze that, but to handle the people in an empathetic way,” said Thomas.

The Baylor Law Team’s win launched them to represent the United States for the competition in the Netherlands next week.