{"id":505944,"date":"2025-10-17T04:45:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/505944\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T04:45:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:45:22","slug":"confidence-building-for-pupils-in-mock-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/505944\/","title":{"rendered":"Confidence building for pupils in mock trial\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Faulty of Advocates welcomed pupils from eight local secondary schools to Edinburgh Sheriff Court to take part in a mock trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The annual Edinburgh Schools MiniTrials is a scheme which promotes legal education in schools, and the trial dealt with offences relating to assaults and drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Lord Mulholland, Chair of the MiniTrials Steering Group, said: \u201cThe purpose of the MiniTrials initiative is to make the legal system more accessible and hopefully inspire pupils from all backgrounds to consider a career in law. The success of this project in Edinburgh is something we are keen to replicate in other towns and cities across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pupils were given the chance to take part in a mock trial to learn first hand how the legal system works. They presented evidence and a case which is aimed at building confidence by improving critical thinking and public speaking.<\/p>\n<p>Young people from S5 and S6 classes at Boroughmuir High School, Balerno High School, Firrhill High School, Holyrood High School, Leith Academy, St Augustine\u2019s RC High School, St Thomas of Aquin\u2019s, and Tynecastle High School all took part.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Advocate Micheal Upton, Faculty\u2019s MiniTrials Coordinator said: \u201cThe annual Edinburgh schools\u2019 event was as popular as ever with the pupils. The MiniTrials Group is hugely grateful to all of the advocates, solicitors, teachers, court staff, and our chairman, Lord Mulholland, who gave their time to make it happen \u2013 and especially to advocates Safeena Rashid, Paul Harvey, and Mark O\u2019Reilly for so judiciously presiding as the \u201cSheriffs\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny lawyer who\u2019d like to volunteer for a couple of hours at future events can be sure to enjoy encountering the enthusiasm that the young people always bring to learning how to enact a criminal trial using the MiniTrials materials. \u00a0If you are interested, do by all means contact us at <a href=\"http:\/\/theedinburghreporter.co.uk\/cdn-cgi\/l\/email-protection#58353136312c2a3139342b3d36292d312a313d2b183f35393134763b3735\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"374\" data-attachment-id=\"618657\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/theedinburghreporter.co.uk\/2025\/10\/confidence-building-for-pupils-in-mock-trial\/minitrials2025group\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/w=900.jpeg,h=374\" data-orig-size=\"900,374\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"minitrials2025group\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/imagedelivery.net\/F92qk9bnhVOT8KcXbWkWyg\/theedinburghreporter.co.uk\/2025\/10\/minitrials2025group.jpg\/w=300,h=125\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/w=900.jpeg,h=374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/w=900.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-618657\"  \/><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"m-a-box-avatar-url\" href=\"https:\/\/theedinburghreporter.co.uk\/author\/phyllis-stephen\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Phyllis-Summer-2022-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-100x100 size-100x100\" alt=\"\" itemprop=\"image\"   data-attachment-id=\"523819\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/theedinburghreporter.co.uk\/phyllis-summer-2022\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/theedinburghreporter.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Phyllis-Summer-2022-scaled.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"2315,3089\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;1.8&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;iPhone 11&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1652451720&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;4.25&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;32&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0034364261168385&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Phyllis Summer 2022\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/theedinburghreporter.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Phyllis-Summer-2022-225x300.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/theedinburghreporter.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Phyllis-Summer-2022-674x900.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.<br \/>Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.<\/p>\n<p>Like this:<\/p>\n<p>Like Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"sd-link-color\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Faulty of Advocates welcomed pupils from eight local secondary schools to Edinburgh Sheriff Court to take part&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4154,4155,165793,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-505944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-edinburgh-local-news","11":"tag-edinburgh-news","12":"tag-faculty-of-advocates","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115387690206959970","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}