Moot court. For most lawyers, those words probably conjure images of law school competitions and advocates preparing to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. But one Boston law firm had another vision. Choate Hall & Stewart, a 163-lawyer firm founded in 1899, had been honing its appellate practice, and about a year ago it began offering clients the chance to moot arguments being prepared for Massachusetts appellate and federal circuit courts. The firm has mooted 10 in that time, and it reports that clients have been uniformly enthusiastic. The program that Choate has developed may even serve as a model for others, if firms enlist the right lawyers to lead it.
The “right lawyers” for Choate turned out to be Margaret Marshall and Joan Lukey. Marshall, who had been a Choate partner from 1989 to 1992, when she left to become the first female general counsel at Harvard University, returned in 2012. What made her the key player was her 11 years as chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (the first woman to hold that position), where she was probably best known for writing the majority opinion clearing the way for her state to become the first to legally sanction same-sex marriage.
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