by Megyn Kelly
I am a big believer in that old Henry Ford quote: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t—you’re right.” Moot court is where that all started for me.
In retrospect, there were signs to support my confidence. While I hadn’t been focused on academics in high school, I loved public speaking. It was my favorite course. After my father died, I’d written and read aloud a poem about loss that took every ounce of strength in me. I swallowed hard to make it through without crying, only to look up and see I was the only one who wasn’t. And like my mom, I also enjoyed being “on” in a room. I had her authoritative voice. A good voice is important for any public speaker, but especially for a woman. In fact, I believe women with very high voices should consider voice training; there is no better way to be instantly dismissed—other than bad wardrobe or makeup choices—than to sound like a child when you talk.
I’d used my voice to great effect during one of my jobs in college as a telemarketer. Though I’d continued teaching aerobics throughout college, I’d also taken up selling 1-800 numbers for businesses as a way to make more money. At first, I found I couldn’t sell very well if I used my own name. I did much better if I used a fake name: “Hi, this is Rachel calling . . .” (Or, as my mom would say, “Racial.”)
That kind of acting was an effective tool, and a skill—one that I honed later as a young lawyer, when I was deposing powerful, high-rolling clients in cases where millions of dollars were at stake. If I failed, it wasn’t really me, but an alter ego. That took some of the pressure off. With “Rachel” and my voice, I became a killer telemarketer and made excellent money for a summer job. They never made it official, but I felt sure I was chief telemarketer.
The end result of all this was that I knew I was good enough for the trial team, even though it was quite competitive. Still, there was no question I was going to have to work at it—everyone wanted one of those spots. I spent the summer of 1993 studying the sample criminal case they gave us, a notebook filled with transcripts and other “evidence” against a young fictional man who’d kidnapped and raped a fictional woman named Lynn Anne Montoya.
They left it up to us whether to argue the prosecution or the defense case. I was always more inclined to put criminals behind bars, rather than keep them out, so that’s the side I chose. Not to diminish what criminal defense attorneys do—I respect them greatly. They serve an important role in our criminal justice system, which is stacked against defendants and does get abused. But I found the idea of prosecuting cases honorable, and that’s what I wanted to do.
For weeks, I prepared, studying the case and crafting the best legal argument. Night after night I sat in my bedroom, working at my assemble-it-yourself particleboard desk with one bright lamp. I wrote and rewrote the most compelling closing argument I could. I spent days tightening the logic and tying the evidence together. I looked deep in the case file for clues that might bolster my circumstantial case.
In the end, after many weeks of writing, I knew I had something that would sing. I practiced in front of the mirror, my friends, basically anyone who would listen, which more often than not meant my mom, my stepfather Peter, and my sister Suzanne. I remember sitting my mom and Suzanne down in foldout chairs in my sister’s backyard one day and delivering the whole closing without notes, spelling out what had happened to Ms. Montoya in great detail.
When I got to the most gruesome part, my sister said loudly, “That’s disgusting!”
It appears we’ve won over juror number two, I thought.
The day of the tryout, I was like a racehorse in the starting gate. I walked into the classroom where tryouts were. It was cold and white, with about twenty desks and chairs and not much on the walls except a blackboard in the front, where I was.
And then I saw him. In the back of the room by the windows, the legendary Ken Melilli—Yale and NYU law grad, former federal prosecutor, head trial team coach, and beloved criminal procedure professor. He was about six feet tall, with a full head of dark hair—smart, confident, and infamously unsparing in his analysis of students, and life.
Next to him was his assistant coach, a young blond woman I had never seen before. Glad to see there’s no bias against young blond women in this room, I remember thinking.
There were very few words between us before I got started.
“Hello,” I was told. “State your name. Please proceed.”
The room around me seemed to disappear. This is something that happens to me to this day. It’s as if adrenaline shuts out all stimuli outside of the thing on which I have to concentrate. I took a deep breath, looked them in the eye, and before I knew it, I was off.
For twenty minutes, I waxed on about the defendant and Ms. Montoya—hitting the crescendos and decrescendos, holding back at moments, raising my voice a bit for dramatic effect, and building the drama to the end. I wasn’t nervous. I was exhilarated. I could do this. This felt right. I believed in my case. I knew I could convince them. Stay cool, stay collected, I thought. Don’t get too emotional, don’t oversell it.
“The defendant is guilty,” I said. “He kidnapped this woman in broad daylight. And then subjected her to hours of unspeakable cruelty. What will he do if you acquit him, ladies and gentlemen? Do you want this man back on the streets? Around your families? Don’t make the same mistake his victim did. Don’t trust him.”
When I was done, all Melilli said was “Thank you.”
I was a little disappointed. I thought I had nailed it, and I half expected on-the-spot feedback. Maybe a “Great job!” or, in a perfect world “You did it! Welcome to trial team!” What I got instead was a nod toward the door, which I opened and walked through.
What I didn’t know then was that Melilli and his assistant coach had looked at each other after I closed the door and high-fived. Melilli later told me in his office that I was not only the highest-scoring candidate for the team that year but the highest-scoring candidate they’d ever had. He also kept my ego in check, telling me never to refer to the jury as “ladies and gentlemen” because it’s alienating, and that I had violated a major ethical rule by trying to make the jury fear for its own safety. Whoops.
Overall, it had gone great, though. As a kid who never excelled particularly in anything but being popular, that moment was the first taste I can ever remember of knowing that I could do something, and then hearing someone else confirm, “You’re really good at this.”
That’s a marker in time for anyone. More than simply boosting my confidence, it confirmed that my instincts about myself had been right. Because I grew up the way I did, I’d been honest enough with myself to know what I could and couldn’t do. With moot court, I’d been able to sense that fine line between hoping I would be good at something and actually being good at it. That kind of self-awareness rarely just happens—it needs to be cultivated. Having that intuition about my own abilities validated was a crucial first step toward believing I had promise in this field. It started to dawn on me, sitting in that office in my jeans and a T-shirt, sporting a ponytail of blond hair, that I really might be more than a cheerleader who could type fast.
5
Trial Team Barbie
Law school was challenging, in a great way. Generally, with every tough class I weathered I grew more certain of my abilities. But then, a setback: at the end of my first year, I failed to “grade on” to the Albany Law Review, the prestigious student-edited law journal.
“You didn’t grade on? Wow,” said Jane, a little too gleefully.
Being on the Law Review is basically a yearlong homework assignment, but it is also a huge résumé builder. If you finished the first year in the top 10 percent of your class, you automatically “graded on.” I was in the top 12 percent, but anyone in the top 20 percent could attempt to “write on” to the Law Review instead, which required a hell of a lot of work the summer after first year. I was determined, and I just about killed myself working to write on in the summer of 1993.
Every spare hour of every
day, I was working on that Law Review piece, finding holes in my arguments, perfecting the language. At the same time I was preparing my trial team audition, as well as working nights and weekends teaching aerobics, and working full-time during the week for a local law firm, at which I was busting my ass. The senior partner and I worked together all summer on a case involving a patron at a bar who got drunk, drove home, got hurt, then sued the bar. I had done a ton of research and witness interviews, and spent a fair amount of time briefing this partner. One day he called me into his office.
I walked in full of hope. This is it, I thought. He’s seen how hard I’ve been working. He’s going to give me a really good case, or a job offer, or a recommendation . . .
“Megyn, I’ve been thinking,” he said. That was good. He was thinking! About me! Surely about the long hours I was putting in for the firm. Then came the kicker: “I’d really love to set you up with my son.”
I stood there in shock. I didn’t want to go out with his son. I wanted an assignment.
Here I was working tirelessly at this firm because I wanted him to see me as a future associate, not as a future daughter-in-law. He went on to tell me how attractive I was, just his son’s type, and would I consider a dinner out with the two of them?
I realize he meant no offense. This guy was born around 1930 and raised in a different time. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation. These days, I think we are much more conscious of the fact that we don’t only praise the girls for being pretty and the boys for being smart. Many women I knew at the time were sent similar messages—that no matter how tough they were or how hard they worked, ultimately they were more likely to be pulled in for a chat about their dating status or their looks than for a conversation about their career.
No real harm was done to me in this exchange, but it was a moment in which I remember realizing that I might have challenges getting some men to take me seriously. I didn’t spend much time thinking of it as good, bad, or otherwise; I viewed it as information. This was something I would encounter, so I had to learn to deal with it. The bottom line for me was, no, I did not want to date his son. Besides, who had time to date? I had to write on.
In August the letter arrived with the Law Review decision inside. I picked up the envelope, praying. I understood how much was riding on it. This was my last shot. There were no do-overs here. I held it up to the light, trying to see through the envelope, as if that protective layer between me and the news might somehow cushion the blow. After about a minute of that nonsense I ripped open the envelope. I had done it.
The significance of that moment cannot be overstated. In fact, one could argue that my entire future depended on the strength of the article I submitted for the write-on competition. Without that feather in my cap, I almost certainly would not have caught the eye of my eventual law firm, which only accepted one or two students from my class in a very competitive process. I came away feeling empowered: I am in charge of changing my life, and hard work matters. I didn’t need money, or connections to power, or the natural advantages some of my classmates had. Through sheer force of will, I could get myself where I wanted to go.
Between writing onto the Law Review and making the trial team, I was feeling increasingly confident in my skills as a potential lawyer, a feeling that only got stronger once I actually started competing in moot court. To this day, my moot court experiences in law school are among my best memories.
In my second year of law school, my friend David Hillman and I partnered up for the Gabrielli Appellate Advocacy Moot Court Competition. We were given a case to study. Then we had to write an appellate brief, and for months on end we argued the case before appeals court judges—sometimes real ones, sometimes professors playing the part.
For weeks at the beginning we toiled away in the small, run-down law school cafeteria, arguing over what each of us believed were our most persuasive positions. We both had strong personalities, which led to many heated discussions. Generally, however, we worked things out. In the afternoons, we hunkered down in the school’s one-room computer lab along with dozens of other competitors. As this was before the days of everyone having a personal computer, we hovered over each other to type the brief and make it look professional.
I remember looking out the window at the gorgeous upstate New York fall day and thinking, I want to be out there. But I knew I was working toward a goal. Beauty, nature, and fun would have to wait. As it turned out, they would wait a long damn time.
When the competition began, Hillman and I wouldn’t find out until right before we got up whether we were arguing for the appellant or the respondent, so we had to know both sides of the argument cold. This required a ton of work, but made us much better advocates. It was also a skill that would serve me well later in my law career and my TV job. I used to say at Fox News, when we still had a show called Hannity & Colmes, which involved a conservative versus a liberal, that I could sit in for either guy on any given day. So, by the way, could Hillman.
Hillman and I were very frank with each other. He spoke with a charming Queens accent. There is no accent I like more than the New York City one. “I like ta read tha paper in the maw-ning—that’s vehry impo’nt ta me,” Hillman would say. And, after the arguments, “I thawt you’ve done betta—I’m not gonna ly-e.”
I enjoyed being with him even given the sharp elbows, which I threw right back. Come to think of it, moot court was actually excellent training for the debate prep I do with my colleagues Bret Baier and Chris Wallace to this day. And just as Hillman and I gave each other a hard time, Chris and Bret and I never mince words: “That’s too wordy!” “No one will understand that!” “Aren’t you missing the real issue?” In both cases, the combative preparation made our work better.
We made it to the finals on November 18, 1993, my twenty-third birthday.
The competition was held at the law school’s biggest auditorium, a gleaming brand-new amphitheater that commanded all eyes to a stage down below with an elevated judge’s bench in the front. There were two lecterns in front of the bench, with a desk for the advocates beside them.
The room sat several hundred people. That night, it was standing room only. People filled the stairways and balconies and doorways, and I was both thrilled and nervous as hell to get up there in front of them. Then, as now before a big event, I would look at the clock a day earlier and say to myself, Twenty-four hours from now, it will be done. Just get through these twenty-four hours.
The argument was before three judges from the New York State Court of Appeals—the highest court in New York State. Knowing the legal brainpower that would be testing our positions was disconcerting. But it was also good practice for being a lawyer, when your adversary is getting paid to destroy your argument.
Before we got started, the four finalists had dinner with the judges at the law school. I was starstruck by the intellect in the room. This might never happen to me again, I thought.
One of those judges, Judge Vito Titone of Staten Island, in appearance and demeanor reminded me of then–sitting Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and he was one of the most respected people on the court. In one quiet moment, Hillman told Judge Titone how honored we were to be there.
“Really, no matta what happens tonight,” Hillman said, “we’ve awl-ready won.”
I looked at my partner (who, by the way, is now a gifted and successful lawyer in New York). What are you saying? I thought.
And Judge Titone said what I was thinking: “Second place is losing, son.”
When it was my turn to argue that night, I got up, looked at the judges, and had a bit of a moment. There they are, I thought . . . and here I am. On my feet. Making an argument. And ready, I knew, for anything they might throw at me. Well, I hoped that was the case. Please God, let me be ready for anything they might throw at me.
I started talking: “May it please the Court . . . Counsel . . .” And I was off to the races. By the time I sat down, I felt as if I’d swum the Atlan
tic. My adrenaline was pumping, but the relief at being done was enormous. The arguments went well on both sides, so much so that when it was all over, it was not clear to me who had won.
Much as they do with the Miss America pageant, they read the results of other, lesser awards first. Of the three hundred people who participated in the competition, so-and-so wins Most Improved, such-and-such wins Best Brief (we won Third Best Brief), and so on. By the time they got to the winner of the finals, my heart was in my throat.
Hillman and I held hands and waited, eyes on the table in front of us. It had been our friends—two guys we really liked—opposite us that night. It was a little tough to root against them, but we wanted to win, and badly. If we have to lose, I remember thinking, it wouldn’t be terrible to lose to these guys.
What I was doing was something Dr. Phil McGraw advises: Answer the what-if question. When something is bothering you, answer the what-if question and get yourself okay with that imagined result. It’s a technique for handling stress, and it works like a charm.
Finally, they announced the competition’s Winners of Second Place—a preposterous term—and we heard our names.
All the blood seemed to drain from our faces. Dejection immediately set in. Those warm feelings I had been having about our friends across the aisle turned to sour, biting ones. These two guys? Seriously? Suddenly we wanted nothing more than to get out of there. I hated the feeling. And yet I knew I could do something with this misery. After all, how can you know how much you hate losing if you never experience it? I can draw on that dejection right now—it’s still there at the ready. And it is, indeed, a powerful motivator.
Before the night was over, the woman who ran the competition—Patricia DeAngelis, who went on to become a tough-as-nails district attorney in New York State—presented a special award. I had known Trish, a slender brunette with a take-no-prisoners style, since my days as a Pop Warner cheerleader, and we had become friends again when I got to ALS, where she was a year ahead of me. She stood before the auditorium—packed with my classmates, professors, and some high school friends who had showed up to provide moral support, along with my mom and Peter—and said she had one more special announcement to make.