Every year during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, UCLA Mock Trial hosts the UCLASSIC: UCLA Sunset Strip Invitational Competition. The UCLASSIC is primarily geared to and designed for local teams, but we are joined each year by many of the nation’s top programs as well. The focus on West Coast programs, the diverse and extremely competitive field, and the excellent judging (over 100 actual attorneys and judges will preside over the trials) consistently place the UCLASSIC among the best tournaments on the West Coast year-in and year-out.
The first round of invitations is typically sent out in July or August, with the deadline to accept/decline being sometime in September. Once all or most of the invitees have responded, programs with teams on the waitlist are notified.
However, UCLA will not be hosting UCLASSIC this winter. Instead, UCLA will be hosting the 2017 AMTA National Championship
We are extremely fortunate to have had so much success with the UCLASSIC thus far, and we’re humbled that it has become such a highly regarded tournament. While we can’t make promises to anyone, there are several things we consider when putting together our list of invitees every year:
Proximity: is the program a local program?
History: has the program been invited in the past? Has the program accepted those invitations? How has the program performed at the UCLASSIC in the past?
Past performance: how has the program been performing overall in recent seasons?
It also helps when programs directly reach out to us, so please don’t hesitate to contact us!
The UCLA Mock Trial Executive Board has a Tournament Director every year. This year, it will be Maddy Yzurdiaga, who can be contacted at uclainvite@gmail.com.