The Personal Business Law class went to the Nineteenth Official Circuit Court in Waukegan on Friday, November 22, to learn how the court system works in real life.

The class visited several courtrooms including family, evictions and collections, and a domestic abuse court.

“To see how real law works and court systems, it was pretty interesting. It was weird to hear how the real life trials work and everything because we obviously went through the questions and stuff, but we never saw the real deal,” said freshman Denisa Belei.   

In class, students learned about the law and how the court system works, even having a mock trial.

 “In our class, we learn about the legal system and all the people that are in the court such as judges, ballors, attorneys and everything like that. We got to see a lot of those people there and ask them questions one on one because we actually came right when the trial was ending,” said freshman Celia Palamalayil. 

Personal Business Law teacher Tony Bussone was friends with Judge Betar, one of the judges there, which allowed his students to ask more questions.

“While still maintaining his court and hearing cases, he was able to talk to us and he even had the lawyers that were presenting arguments; he would take a time out and those lawyers would talk to us. And after their case, they would sit down and have a question and answer session,” Bussone said.

Going to a courtroom is a good learning experience and can show what actually goes on vs an expectation. 

“Now most people have an idea of what goes on in a courtroom from tv but to be there and see it for real; it’s different. Just being there is a real powerful experience, and it’s something many young people haven’t experienced,” Bussone said. 

 Despite already learning about how a court system work in class, being there made the difference in how students saw it. 

“I mean everything we did in class was like yeah I understood it, but when it came to the real life, how emotional it could be for certain victims, like the witnesses and everything, how much the judge really has to dwell with,” Belei said. 

The students this year did not get to see as much as previous years because they went on a Friday, and many things closed early on Fridays along with bus trouble. 

“So usually in the earlier years we got to stay longer, but we came a little bit later because of bus problems, and so we didn’t get to see as much as we wanted to,” Palamalayil said.