r/mocktrial

I've recently been working on a project inspired by AMTA's collegiate mock trial's ranking system to rank every United States high school mock trial team. To do this, I'll use the ballots a team wins at both their state competition and at nationals to calculate a ranking similar to AMTA's system. However, many states do not have their exact results publicly available, which is where y'all come in!

I'm looking specifically for the number of ballots each team won in the preliminary rounds of the state competition. If you have this information for your state (or even just for your school) please message me or leave the name of your state in the comments, and I'll DM you if I'm missing it!

I'm also more than happy to share my results once it's finalized. Thanks everyone! :)

Hey r/mocktrial,

I've been working on a timekeeping tool for mock trial called Bailiff, originally because I wanted something better than a phone stopwatch for my team's competitions.

It's completely browser-based, with no account or installation required:

https://chaowoses.dev/Bailiff/

The basic idea is that instead of dealing with a bunch of timers and trying to keep track of paused time, you set up the entire trial beforehand and the app handles the rest.

Some of the stuff it can do:

• Set up custom trial blocks and drag-and-drop their order
• Quickly enter times (0500 becomes 05:00)
• Start/pause/reset individual blocks
• Add or subtract 15/30 seconds or enter a custom adjustment
• Automatically track overtime
• Save a trial and come back to it later
• Autosave during a round
• Survive accidental reloads
• Save reusable trial presets
• Works on phones, tablets, and computers

The main feature I'm interested in getting feedback on is called Timed Ruling Mode, and it's designed to handle objections where the timekeeper needs to account for the ruling. You can link opposing blocks (like Direct and Cross examinations), and when an objection happens, the website tracks the paused time separately. On resume:

• Sustain: objection time comes off of the current speaker's time
• Overrule: objection time comes off the linked opposing block
• Resume/Bench: deducts nothing

For example, if Direct Examination is paused for an objection and the objection is overruled, the time comes off of the Cross-Examination instead of penalizing the direct examiner.

It's open source and MIT licensed, so feel free to look at the code, contribute, or get ideas for your own team's tools. If you end up using Bailiff's code or adapting ideas or features from the project in your own tool, I'd appreciate a link back to the Bailiff website or repository.

Source code: https://github.com/chaowoses/Bailiff

If you have a feature request, bug report, or suggestion, feel free to make a GitHub issue or PR. I'd love feedback from other timekeepers/coaches/competitors, especially on the timed ruling system. I'm also happy to add support for other competition formats if people find it useful.