Before they did anything, assistant dean Lenny “Coach” Mandell gave them some advice.

“There are 30 teams,” he cautioned. “Don’t expect to win. Don’t expect anything. Only one team wins. Just have fun.”

But if they did come home with the “hardware,” he would retire.

On the night before the last day of the three-day long competition, the 2001 NIU law team attended an awards banquet. Awards for the Best Petitioner’s Brief, the Best Respondent’s Brief and the Best Oralist were given. When they announced that the team from NIU won the Best Petitioner’s Brief award, Mandell leaned over to his wife and whispered, “I think we might’ve won this thing.”

And just as they did the other couple of days, they advanced. Greg Brady, Steve Brooks and Christian Sullivan, members of the team, were headed to the final round.

This was not the position that Mandell typically finds his teams in. There usually was an early exit, followed by a congratulatory dinner at the Berghoff restaurant in Chicago. Then they’d go home. But this time, the team had the highest overall brief score, carrying them to the final round.

They were tired and nervous. They ate fast and went back to their hotel room to prepare and maybe get some rest.

“I didn’t sleep that night,” Brooks said. “Neither did Chris.”

In the closest final in its 20-year history, the John Marshall Law School’s annual Moot Court Competition in Information Technology and Privacy Law garnered the NIU law team a second-place finish — the highest of any NIU team.

The team lost by 0.07 of a point out of 200. Mandell would have to wait on his retirement.

“We didn’t plan on doing very well,” Sullivan confessed. “But we did want to write a really good brief, and we did that.”

Mandell has been coaching NIU teams in this competition for 12 years.

“Coach told us not to expect anything,” Brady said.”So when we thought we got our butts kicked in an oral debate, we thought we were done. We’d be ready to go to the bar and get drunk.”

But the team kept hearing its name called, Mandell said.

The competition boasted 30 law school teams from the United States and two from Australia. The field included teams from University of Florida, University of Wisconsin, University of Texas, Florida State, Chicago State and many other distinguished schools.

Justices from state and federal courts served as judges, including two justices from the State Supreme Courts of Idaho and Michigan.

“That was awesome,” Brooks said. “To argue your case in front a supreme court judge is something that never happens. It’s rare for any lawyer.”

Year after year, the competition focuses on a technology and privacy issues reported in the news. This year’s case required arguments based on the privacy implications of facial recognition technology.

In the case, the plaintiff was photographed at a basketball game and his photograph was used on a billboard in conjunction with a campaign to locate missing children. His wife was a convicted child abductor. He wasn’t. He sued for false light invasion of privacy. To place someone in false light is to portray an individual in a way that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.

“This is a real client in a real case that you actually represent,” Mandell said of the mock trial. “It’s a great opportunity for them. I told them to be a passionate advocate for your client. To be confident, persuasive and explain and educate the court.”

Their winning brief will be published in the John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law.

“This a tremendous milestone for our program and the student body,” Mandell said.

Brooks agreed.

“Honestly, I was happy to get as far as we got,” Brooks said. “It showed that NIU could compete with the top law schools.”

The third-year law students wrote and researched the entire brief by themselves. Only two of them were allowed to argue either for the plaintiff or against. Brady argued both ways, because the “courts like him,” and Brooks would argue against.

They only had one superstition they cared to talk about.

They each had an Altoid before every argument. Brady had two.

“We had chemistry,” Brooks said.

“We are extremely proud of what we did,” Brady said. “Hopefully the university is too.”