Moot court in 2012 certainly isn’t quite the same as it was for those of us in the Class of 1977. Indeed, moot court is as advanced and spectacularly nouveau as is Marquette Law’s remarkable new edifice: Eckstein Hall.

After five spinal fusion surgeries and two years in the Heart Transplant Program at the University of Miami Hospitals, I returned to MULS during late October 2011 to reconnect with my law school alma mater.

Dean Matt Parlow invited me to help Professor Melissa Greipp by using my 30 years of experience in appellate matters to coach MULS students in the national moot court teams. Professor Greipp welcomed me warmly, and this has been a most rewarding experience.

The positive, numerous expansions of the Marquette moot court program in 2012 are impressive. Permit me to compare briefly my experience in 1977 to the most recent 2012 Spong and Jenkins Honors Moot Court competitions.

In my day, as 1L’s (we were “1st Years” then) we were selected by the second- and third-year students on the “National Team” based on the briefs and oral arguments of our first-year Appellate Advocacy Course. Only five students were selected. As an aside, my team ultimately yielded some other very successful attorneys: Hon. Patricia Gorence, a United States Magistrate Judge; John Whiting, a Quarles & Brady partner; Patricia Grazyk, a Quarles & Brady partner and commentator on the then-new 1976 Wisconsin Rules of Civil Procedure; and Jim Curtis, a noted trial lawyer in La Crosse, Wisconsin. We then virtually lived on the third floor of Sensenbrenner Hall in the old “Moot Court Room” for the next two years, practicing before one another without the assistance of private practitioners. We proceeded to Chicago for our competition with a faculty advisor.

In 2012, I discovered there is a Law School Moot Court Board, run by students who have won intramural competitions (the Jenkins Competition and others). In addition, a number of teams compete nationally in subject areas that vary each year, and numerous other national teams are comprised for specific areas of the law. The teams are impressive to say the least. No longer is there just one National Team to represent Marquette Law School in a single competition.

I spent time in January 2012 coaching two students selected for the Spong Competition at the William and Mary College of Law in Williamsburg, Virginia. This was the 41st year of the Spong Competition. Marquette’s team reached the quarter-finals (of 26 impressive law schools such as NYU, Columbia, Georgetown), and one of our students was awarded 2nd Best Oralist in the competition. I then had the privilege to judge students in the preliminary rounds of the Jenkins Competition in March.

Marquette’s Moot Court program has become as spectacular as has its new facility and will surely continue to excel. This isn’t your grandfather’s Oldsmobile—as the commercial went. Thank you, Dean Parlow and Professor Greipp and the talented students I had the honor to coach and judge. Simply impressive.