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As a member of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law National Trial Team, Lindsey McCulley ’12 was a fierce competitor, but she also found camaraderie like she’d never experienced before. The combination translated to superior career training and friends for life.
“Even today, I’m always talking to alumni who were on the trial team with me,” she says, “because, just like sports teams, we went through it together and it was tough, but at the end so rewarding.”
This year marks the National Trial Team’s 25th anniversary. The program is celebrating a quarter century of preparing students to be courtroom ready as they join a tight-knit network of legal professionals.
Ready for the Future
Throughout its history, the National Trial Team has helped students, through rigorous preparation, to become lawyers equipped to serve clients from their first day on the job.
“On the weekends, we did two trials in a day, sometimes four trials in the weekend,” remembers McCulley. “There were real judges from the community, and also practitioners and our alumni coaches who had been on the team and then were coaching the students. And the level that they expected from you and pushed you to be at really helped me in my future legal career.”
McCulley has had a varied career, with experience clerking for state and federal judges, as an assistant U.S. attorney, and in private practice. She says her trial team experience gave her a leg up when she began representing clients in real-life cases.
“You can feel comfortable and confident and focus on what the needs of the client are, instead of ‘I’m so nervous to say my name; I don’t know how to enter this piece of evidence without an objection; how do I get my point across without this witness walking all over me?’ Those are the things that the trial team helped me not to have to worry about,” McCulley says.
Ben Garmoe ’16 became the team’s managing director in 2020. When he began, it was a part-time position, which became full-time following a generous gift from Stuart Salsbury ’71 and Suzanne Salsbury ’73, which endowed the Salsbury Director of Trial Advocacy. Like McCulley, Garmoe is a trial team alum. After graduation, Garmoe clerked for then-Baltimore City Circuit Court Associate Judge Edward R. K. Hargadon ’80 before starting an in-house position that he landed from a connection with a former teammate.
“I think I did my first solo district court trial maybe nine days after I started and it was no problem,” Garmoe recalls. “Within a month or two, I was handling a very busy district court docket and felt comfortable I had every skill that I needed.”
A Team Effort
As the Salsbury Director, Garmoe eagerly combines his litigation experience and dedication to the team with a love of teaching. Today, he coordinates all aspects of the team, including coaching, travel, and recruiting. Student captains are responsible for day-to-day operations. Other student leaders help with tasks like public relations and recruiting competition judges.
The National Trial Team also relies on some 20 volunteer coaches, most of whom are alumni of the program. McCulley encourages alumni to give students the experience they once had. “Think about how impactful it was for you to be a member of the trial team, the skills that you learned, the fact that you may have had your ‘A-ha!’ moment during the time that you were on the trial team,” she says. “You want future students to have that moment, too.”
Connections that Count
But it’s not just the joy of giving back that draws alumni. Alumni connections are crucial to the program as a whole and to individual members. For McCulley, one such connection led to her current job at litigation boutique firm Salsbury Sullivan, founded by her co-director and one-time coach Ben Salsbury ’07. When Ben’s parents Stuart and Suzanne endowed the director position, they were inspired in part by their son’s National Trial Team experience.
“Based on our relationship, [Ben] knew what kind of attorney I was and how I would be working at his firm,” McCulley remarks. Shortly after she joined Salsbury Sullivan, the firm also hired Dylan Elliott ’20, who had been coached by both McCulley and Salsbury.
“Some [coaches] have hired our students into their own offices,” Garmoe says, noting the benefit to alumni volunteers of “having the first crack at hiring these really talented trial-ready lawyers.”
Alumni in the Courtroom
McCulley says she frequently sees other trial team alumni in court and in the local legal community. “I have been a part of the trial team for so long now and Baltimore is so small that it’s just inevitable that I have people that I coached on the opposite side of me sometimes and as colleagues in different organizations,” she says. It’s not unusual to see trial team alumni on the bench as well. Alumni in the field include Judge Brendan Hurson ’05 and Magistrate Judge Charles Austin ’12, both of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.
“The hundreds of hours committed to the trial team enhanced the foundation of my work ethic upon graduation as well as bonds with classmates that remain sound almost 15 years later,” Judge Austin notes. “These experiences empowered me, as both a junior law firm associate and assistant United States attorney, to appear in front of the state and federal bench with confidence, competence, and composure.”
In addition to volunteering to coach current trial team students, McCulley supports the team financially. She is a key member of the Trial Advocacy Leadership Council, a group of dedicated alumni who support the trial team through annual gifts. Alumni giving helps students enter and travel to national competitions.
“Those experiences are invaluable to them to test their skills against other teams and see what it’s like to go to another courthouse and practice there,” McCulley says.
Benefit to Clients
Even as the trial team continues to be successful year after year, alumni recall how Professor Emeritus Jerry Deise, who founded the team in 1999, would frequently say that the goal wasn’t to win competitions but to prepare future lawyers.
“Director Emeritus Deise would tell us that we were learning how to be good trial lawyers and winning the competitions is just a byproduct of being good lawyers,” says McCulley. “They are not just helping themselves be champions – obviously, we want that, too – but they are ready to go out into the world and do good for their clients.”
As Judge Austin says, “Director Emeritus Deise, aided by a roster of alumni who developed successful practices in and around Baltimore, instilled in us not only technical skills but also a sense of professionalism and duty as ambassadors for our school, future members of the bar, and spokespersons for our future clients.”
Garmoe is optimistic about the team’s future. “I genuinely believe there is no better career preparation program in the country for future litigators and future trial attorneys than what we do here at Maryland Carey Law,” he says. “Our focus on being ready to practice on day one, learning a diverse and useful set of skills, and making connections with alumni in a vast range of legal fields and other fields, I just don’t think there’s another opportunity like it.”
Pictured: Members of the 2023-2024 National Trial Team
Trial by Fire was originally published in the summer 2024 issue of the Maryland Carey Law magazine.