Episode 45

The next evening, I found myself in the familiar study room.

It had been out of use for a while due to renovations, but they had finished the work this morning.

The reason I was here today was to prepare for the Jaine Moot Court Competition.

Han Seol was next to me, and beyond her sat the final member of our team for this competition.

"So," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. "It ended up being her, after all?"

Opposite Han Seol, Lee Ha-roo was sucking on a straw, drinking coffee from a disposable instant cup.

I had never even considered asking her, thinking that she would absolutely refuse, so it was quite unexpected.

"I need data."

That was Lee Ha-roo's explanation.

Her search and summarization program, 'Easy-Peasy,' was still showing decent performance.

But that alone wasn't enough.

When a large amount of diverse documents and materials that could be used in practice were inputted at once, it would spit out shoddy results like any other AI model.

Lee Ha-roo's goal was to collect more data to tune and improve the model.

"So, I'm creating a prototype that can actually be sold."

Legal tech was a business item that many people were paying attention to.

Legal services were fundamentally very expensive, but they didn't require any great facilities or infrastructure.

The reason they were expensive was simply because lawyers' salaries were high.

If there was a program that could help one lawyer do the work of ten, then, simply put, the service price could be lowered accordingly.

It was a win-win situation because the lawyers themselves would also have less work to do.

The dream business, legal tech.

If a reasonably convincing product was combined with Lee Ha-roo's credentials of graduating from the best research university and law school in Korea, then securing investment would be a piece of cake.

"That way," Lee Ha-roo said, puffing out her chest and listing her grand ambitions. "I'll become a rich, unemployed person who can play games at home every day."

Lee Ha-roo's eyes glazed over as she was immersed in her happy vision of the future.

"Is that all it is?"

So, she was going to work a bit harder now so that she could be even lazier later.

I didn't know whether I should see this as progress or not.

But I could understand her motivation for participating.

The Jaine Moot Court Competition involved reading vast and complex materials and constructing arguments within a short period of time.

It would provide the exact type of data that 'Easy-Peasy' needed for improvement.

Furthermore, the competition materials were confidential.

Although the content that had been reconstructed from memory would circulate among the students, the reproduction was crude due to the sheer volume of it.

The only way to get the materials was to participate directly.

'Still, she's a hard worker when she has a goal...'

"And I also asked if I could use Easy-Peasy on-site. They said it was okay since internet searches are allowed anyway," Han Seol added. She was always thorough.

If Easy-Peasy could be used on-site, it would be a considerable advantage. I had no choice but to agree.

"Alright. Let's go with these three."

The team selection was complete.

The problem was how to prepare.

"Listen carefully. We have to study Criminal Procedure Law from now on."

I said, taking a thick book out of my bag.

It was a textbook for the bar exam on Criminal Procedure Law, written by a famous instructor in the cram school district.

"...Do we have to do all of this?"

Lee Ha-roo asked with a gloomy face.

The in-school preliminary rounds of the moot court competition were scheduled for the following week.

Even if we started studying right now, it was impossible to complete all of this in time.

"Are we going to pull all-nighters again?"

"No. We can't do it all anyway. Even if we did, we'd have to pull all-nighters every day, and then we'd be lying in the morgue together instead of being in the preliminary rounds," I said, shaking my head at Han Seol's question.

"We can't possibly do it all."

And then I proposed.

"So, let's just focus on what's absolutely necessary."

"...What's absolutely necessary?"

Of course, there was no content in Criminal Procedure Law that wasn't necessary.

Eventually, we had to know the entire scope to advance to the main rounds and to the final round in the summer.

But we couldn't prepare like that right now.

Therefore, we had no choice but to conquer the most important parts that were most likely to be encountered in the competition.

"The procedure for criminal litigation goes like this."

I stood up and started writing on the board.

Internal Investigation.

Investigation.

Conclusion of Investigation.

Trial.

Appeal and Remand.

"When a crime occurs, the investigative authorities either directly recognize the crime or receive a report, and then they investigate. If the results of the investigation show that the case is punishable, the investigation records are handed over to the prosecutor, who decides whether or not to indict."

If the prosecutor thought that the case wasn't worthy of being brought to court, then the case would end with a non-indictment, and if they thought that this person had to be brought to justice, then they would indict and a trial would be held.

If both parties accepted the result, the trial would end, and if they didn't accept and disputed it through appeals or remands, then it would continue to the second and third trials.

"Among these, the parts that we need to know for this time are here."

I pointed at the investigation and trial parts in turn.

"Investigation and trial."

The Jaine Moot Court Competition was held in the form of a mock trial.

But it wasn't like we were actually conducting a real trial, and it wasn't like we had to personally carry out all of the procedures of a criminal trial.

"Only the trial procedure, that is, the process of the trial on the day, is cut out and reproduced. Therefore, the only thing that's required of us is to determine and prove whether the defendant is guilty or innocent."

In other words, the substantive judgment of the case would determine the winner or loser.

"On the other hand, procedural law is a law about procedure. Most of the provisions exist to ensure that the parties involved in the trial can have their rights protected through due process, and they don't directly affect the substantive judgment."

However, there were still critical junctions that could directly shake the substantive judgment.

"Critical junctions?" Han Seol asked.

"Think about it. In court, what is 'substantive judgment' based on?"

"Hmm... wouldn't it ultimately be based on the evidence that's submitted? Because all facts and arguments must be proven in the end."

"Exactly."

Judges only make judgments based on proven facts.

Arguments that aren't proven, no matter how plausible they seem, are ignored.

The investigation is the process of collecting the 'evidence' necessary for that proof. Therefore, the laws related to the investigation procedure are, in the end, procedural laws related to evidence, and they regulate 'usable evidence' and 'unusable evidence' in court.

On the other hand, there is also a part that deals with evidence in the trial part.

Ultimately, it was necessary to master both of these parts to have any chance of dealing with related content.

"Specifically, in the investigation part, we need to know about the procedures for forced dispositions like arrests, detentions, stop and frisks, and search and seizures. In the evidence part, we need to know about illegally obtained evidence, hearsay evidence, impeachment evidence, and confessions."

"Ugh..."

"Hey, you clearly said you would do it. Let's get started right away."

Lee Ha-roo groaned as I opened the book, but there was no time to be lazy.

Even if we were only looking at the parts related to evidence, it was still the thickest and largest part of Criminal Procedure Law.

The preparation for the Jaine Moot Court Competition, start.

* * *

Time flew by quickly.

As usual, during the day, we continued to study the three main laws of Civil Law, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law, and in the evenings, we gathered together and wrestled with Criminal Procedure Law.

"It's only been a week since the midterms ended..." Lee Ha-roo complained.

"It's been a week already. It's time for us to run diligently," I said.

"Speaking of which, when will our grades be released?" Han Seol asked, making me pause.

It had already been a week since the midterms.

It was a bit unexpected that those people who had been grading so quickly during the free spirit evaluation hadn't released the results yet.

I was confident that I had done well and had done my best, but I couldn't say for sure whether that would translate into results.

I was also a little anxious because I had bragged so much here and there.

'It would be nice if they came out soon.'

"They were grading so quickly during the free spirit evaluation," Han Seol grumbled, as if she had read my mind.

But there was nothing I could do by worrying about it, since the exam scores that we had already submitted wouldn't change anyway.

Right now, we had no choice but to focus on what we could do.

"Let's go. We have to go to the preliminaries."

Today was the day of the preliminaries. The moment had come to test what we had worked so hard to achieve.

"Who's the opposing team?"

"We'll know when we get there. They'll release the bracket at the venue."

The preliminaries for the Jaine Moot Court Competition were scheduled to be held in the mock courtroom installed in the basement of the law building.

We each packed our necessary items and headed to the mock courtroom.

"Let's see..."

We checked the bracket that was posted on the wall.

We could easily find our names.

Park Yoo-seung, Lee Ha-roo, Han Seol, all the way down there.

The opposing team that was next to us was...

"What? It's Jung Min-shik?"

Jung Min-shik, Bae Hyun-joong, and Hwang Gyu-ho, who had applied to our study group and been rejected, were on the same team.

From a skill perspective, Jung Min-shik was definitely the ace... I didn't know how the rest of them had gathered.

Regardless, we had met a considerable powerhouse from the very first match.

"What a coincidence. How did we get matched with each other like this?" Han Seol asked.

"It's inevitable. For this competition, they set the bracket so that the first-year teams would be matched with each other, and the second-year teams would be matched with each other," I replied.

It was a consideration so that the first-year students wouldn't be immediately massacred by the second-year students, who had studied the law of litigation as a regular course.

It was to allow them to have a meaningful growth experience by having them compete with each other first.

There were four first-year criminal teams.

So, from our perspective, we had a 1/3 chance of meeting Jung Min-shik.

'And the person in charge of designing the bracket was Vice Dean Choi Sung-cheol.'

Personally, he was someone that I couldn't possibly like, but as someone who was obsessed with performance, Choi Sung-cheol was thorough when it came to fostering outstanding students.

He was not an incompetent person by any means.

"Anyway, that team isn't an easy opponent, so let's be careful," I said.

Jung Min-shik was a scary guy, not only because of his skills, but also because of his unique obsession and desire for recognition.

He would probably try to bite us to death. We shouldn't face him with a half-baked resolve.

It was at that moment that I was giving a warning.

"Yeah. We have to be careful."

A low voice came from behind us.

When I turned around, Jung Min-shik was glaring at us.

"Because I'm different from someone who got here by luck like you."

"...Weren't we strangers? When did we become close enough to use informal language?"

Most of the students in our cohort were those who had entered law school right after graduating from college.

Therefore, most of them were of the same age or similar, but there were also people who had retaken the college entrance exam or law school entrance exam, and there were people who had social experience.

Regardless of age, wasn't it basic courtesy to use formal language with someone you didn't know well?

Even Kim Seung-pil, who was on the border between being an older brother and an uncle, used formal language with me.

"It's ridiculous that I'm being told about etiquette by you," Jung Min-shik retorted, and a light battle of nerves continued.

To be honest, I had no idea why this guy hated me so much.

He should be clinging to Shin Seo-joon, like he did in the original story, so why was he acting like this with me?

"Because you're annoying."

'Geez.'

I had no intention of getting into an emotional fight.

There were times when that was necessary outside of the courtroom, but at least in there, we had to have a real match where we would argue with logic and evidence.

That was the way to show respect for the sacred courtroom.

I let out a sigh.

"There's a small dog that lives in the house next to mine."

"...What are you talking about out of the blue?"

"I think it was a Bichon or a Poodle, anyway, it barks like crazy whenever it sees me. At first, I thought it was being brave, trying to protect its owner, but that wasn't it."

When I talked to the owner, she told me that the dog barked loudly when it was scared.

It was common knowledge that dogs that barked didn't bite.

It was a bluff that they used because they were weak and afraid of their enemies.

"I was so hurt. Do I look that scary?"

"You look a bit better these days."

"Yeah. You've become less like a thug. You even look kind of handsome these days..."

Han Seol and Lee Ha-roo, who were listening, offered words of consolation.

It seemed that my consistent healthy lifestyle was paying off.

Jung Min-shik frowned and spat out, "What are you trying to say?"

I shrugged my shoulders and asked.

"Are you scared? That you'll lose to me?"

In other words, what you're doing is no different than a scared small dog barking.

If all you can do is bark while hiding in your owner's arms, then there's no reason for me to take you seriously.

"Y, you...!"

"If you're going to bite, then show me inside there. With skill and logic."

I smiled and pointed to the entrance of the mock courtroom.

"Or are you not confident in that either?"