Recent News

The Ohio Center for Law-Related Education (OCLRE) is pleased to accept the continued support of the Supreme Court of Ohio and Attorney General Marc Dann in the effort to create star players for democracy. The Ohio Center for Law-Related Education is celebrating its 25th year of providing law and citizenship education to Ohio students and teachers. For nearly all of those years, the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Office of the Ohio Attorney General have joined in that effort.

 

Twenty-eight schools around Ohio participated in OCLRE’s first High School Mock Trial Competition. The Ohio Center for Law-Related Education, which sponsors the Mock Trial and eight other programs for students, expects nearly 400 teams to participate in the 2008 Mock Trial Competition in February. Approximately 48-thousand students were touched by OCLRE programs in the 2006-2007 school year. More than one thousand judges and attorneys volunteer each year for the civics programs offered by the Ohio Center for Law-Related Education.

 

In the current biennium the Supreme Court of Ohio has granted the Ohio Center for Law-Related Education $229,000 and Attorney General Marc Dann has pledged $125,000 for fiscal year 2008. The support from the Court and the Attorney General allows the Ohio Center for Law-Related Education to provide innovative, hands on law and citizenship curricula to Ohio students. Each program is aligned with Ohio’s Academic Content Standards and teaches the students critical thinking, research, and writing skills.

 

The Ohio Center for Law-Related Education is a non-profit, non-partisan organization sponsored by the Supreme Court of Ohio, the Ohio Attorney General, the Ohio State Bar Association and the ACLU of Ohio Foundation. Additional support has been provided by Chase Bank, the Ohio State Bar Foundation, the Ohio Humanities Council, Ohio Criminal Justice Services, the Constitutional Rights Foundation and the Columbus Bar Foundation. The Columbus Bar and several other bar associations are active in recruiting over a hundred volunteers to serve as judges for the Mock Trials.

 

If you are interested in volunteering as a judge for this year’s Columbus Mock Trial Competition, call Donna Sweet or Marion Smithberger at 221.4112.