May 25th, 2023, Lithuania's Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė awarded prizes to seven Mykolas Romeris University (MRU) Law students for the best closing prosecutor closing speeches in court. Students had to make speeches in a case involving incitement to hatred.
Closing speeches had to be completed by first-year Law School students studying, "Legal Argumentation", and several dozen senior students auditing courses.
In preparation for the speech, students participated in the trial sessions of Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė, as well as prosecutors Darius Čapliks and Oksana Leontjeva. They learned to write the prosecutor's closing speeches, analyzed the characteristics of hate crimes, current court practice and sought to understand the intricacies of legal argumentation in such cases.
All students' speeches were evaluated by the prosecutor of the General Prosecutor's Office Darius Čaplikas and "Legal Argumentation" Lecturers Asta Benetytė, Giedrė Norvilienė and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Juozas Valčiukas. The students evaluations were graded. The 7 students with the best arguments were then invited to the General Prosecutor's Office, where the General Prosecutor Grunskienė presented them with prizes.
"Students had a real case, that was in court a year ago. It was an experience of a real case that allowed students to feel themselves in the role of a prosecutor. I can confidently say that the students' legal arguments are so strong that we, the prosecutors, could learn from them as well," said Prosecutor Čaplikas.
The best speeches were presented by first-year students: Loreta Lukšienė, Orinta Makūnaitė, Paula Strigaitė, Kipris Žukauskas, Karolina Grinkevičiūtė and second-year students Augustina Balaganskaja and Danielė Levickytė.
The subject, ,,Legal Argumentation" is based on experiential learning methods. Students, with the help of lecturers and study subject partners, improve their written legal argumentation skills by learning to write court resolutions, prosecutor's closing speeches, file court cases, and other legal documents.