Three times before, FIU Law was AAJ regional champion, but did not make it out of the preliminaries at nationals. This year, FIU Law earned its national bid by winning the Raleigh, North Carolina region last month. AAJ nationals in Atlanta brought together the country’s regional winners — the 20 best trial teams in America. Your FIU is now among them. FIU Law’s Elite 8 squad was comprised of 3Ls Naomi Eid and Alejandro Gonzalez, and 2Ls Michael Leatherman and Rachel Cross. In the preliminary rounds, FIU Law bested teams from Mercer University and U.C. Berkeley, and lost to the number-one ranked team in the nation – UCLA Then, having advanced as one of the top eight teams, our quarterfinal was a rematch against UCLA. In a clash worthy of Ali-Frazier, UCLA came out on top 2-1. The cumulative scoring differential between the two schools was a single point. Pictured left to right, AAJ 2025 National Competition Quarterfinalist FIU College of Law: 2Ls Michael Leatherman and Rachel Cross, lead coach Ashley Lherisson, and 3Ls Alejandro Gonzalez and Naomi Eid. Having put in six long weeks of story-building and advocacy training to prepare for regionals, this team practiced intensely for an additional month, weekdays, weekday evenings, and weekends, to get ready for Atlanta. Their talent and dedication made this extraordinary result possible. Professor H.T. Smith, Inaugural Director of the FIU Law Trial Advocacy Program, had this to say about our team’s extraordinary achievement: “Even though we have won AAJ regionals three times before, this is the first time that FIU Law has advanced to the quarterfinals at this national competition. These students are trailblazers. By instilling in them, as all our students, a consistent commitment to excellence, FIU Law – where our Trial Ad Program credo is Passionate Principled Advocacy — is now solidly on the national trial team map.” Lead coach for AAJ nationals was once again FIU Law Trial Team alumna Ashley Lherisson (formerly Allison, ’17). Coach Lherisson was assisted by fellow Trial Team alumnus Alexander Pollock (’23), a former AAJ regional champion himself. The team is also grateful for the expert story-crafting and coaching assistance of Professors Ari S. Goldberg (’12) and Anthony C. Hevia (’07), both adjunct professors in our Trial Advocacy Program. We are also appreciative of the assistance provided by former trial team members Igor Hernandez, Forrest Wilson, and Justin Duran. The team also thanks fellow team members Jessica Vargas-Millares, Faitherly Caudio and Benjamin Sly for helping to put them through their paces to prepare for Atlanta. Fellow regional champions competing at AAJ nationals included trial teams from Akron, American, Baylor, Brooklyn, Campbell, Cumberland, Hofstra, Loyola Marymount, Maryland, Mercer, Northwestern, NYU, UC San Francisco, South Texas, the University of Texas, and Syracuse. This concludes our Trial Team’s successful 2024-2025 competition season. In the fall, FIU Law finished Top 4 as a semifinalist in the 2024 Georgetown National White Collar Crime Invitational, earning an automatic bid to Georgetown next fall. And, in the Chester Bedell Memorial last January, the state championship sponsored by the Trial Lawyers Section of The Florida Bar, FIU Law’s two squads finished as semifinalists and quarterfinalists, respectively. AAJ’s STAC is one of only two open national championship tournaments offered in the law school trial team community each year and ranks among the premier mock trial competitions in the country. This year’s national competition presented a civil wrongful death trial involving a fatal highway tractor-trailer crash. To discover more about the FIU Trial Advocacy Program, its Trial Team, curriculum, advocacy and scholarship opportunities, and amazing students, visit law.fiu.edu/trialad or call 305-348-8095.
FIU Law Trial Team Reaches Elite 8 at AAJ Nationals
ATLANTA, Georgia — For the first time in its history, the FIU Law Trial Team advanced to the quarterfinal round at the national finals of the American Association for Justice (AAJ) Student Trial Advocacy Competition (STAC).