LESSONS IN LAW: NHHS student explains court opinions and outcomes with Future Counsel
I was trying to prove my dad was innocent before I even knew what he was accused of. I was 16 when a state sheriff came to our house looking for my dad about an incident involving our car. Neither of my parents was home, so I answered his questions without understanding what was happening. When he asked me to open my garage, I did. There was nothing to hide. I thought maybe if he could see our car wasn't there, my dad would seem less guilty.
My parents came home, and they thought this would fizzle out as some type of miscommunication. Later, when the officers said my dad had to go to the station, Dad came back inside for his wallet. I gave him one of the biggest hugs I’ve ever given anyone. I'm not a hug person whatsoever, but I was crying, and my mom was crying, and in that moment I felt so helpless and lost. Then I watched him get put in handcuffs and placed in their cop car and watched as they drove to the end of my block.
The charges were eventually dropped. I want to tell you that now, because otherwise you might read this entire piece wondering what happened to my dad—and maybe if he was a serial killer. At the time, I had no idea how any of it was going to end. I just wanted to help him, and opening the garage was something I could actually do. Looking back, I wish I’d asked why he wanted me to open it or called my parents first.
At this time, I’d already been interested in the law for years. When I was younger, I would watch police body cam videos on YouTube. Eventually, I wanted to understand the rules behind the videos I was watching. For example, why could an officer do something in one situation but not another? What did someone's rights actually let them do, and to what extent? I loved looking for answers. So it was strange to have spent so much time being interested in these questions and scenarios, yet feeling completely lost as one unfolded on my driveway.
That’s a big part of why I started Future Counsel in June 2026. I should probably introduce myself, too. I'm Gavin Leiner, a junior at New Hanover High School, and I want to be a criminal defense attorney someday. Right now, I read court opinions and explain them in everyday language at futurecounsel.org. If you’ve never opened a court opinion, you’re someone I want to reach. I want anyone to be able to follow what happened with various court cases and why the court decided what it did, even if you might disagree.
I want people to learn about the law before they find themselves in a situation where they might have to know it. But there's a problem that I hadn’t really thought about when creating Future Counsel: If nothing has happened to make you look for this information, what would make you choose to read it?
I could explain every legal term in a review, and you might still have absolutely no reason to open it. Maybe you have enough to read already. Fair. I’m the one who likes spending time on court decisions, and it’s easy to forget that other people have things they’d much rather do. Saying “you should know your rights” doesn't suddenly make my website interesting. Even though, yes, I think you should.
Earlier this year, I emailed Georgetown Law professor Ilya Somin, who studies political ignorance, about how to make legal information worth people's attention. His response brought up sports fans. People learn so much about their teams because they enjoy following them, even though knowing more doesn't give people more control over the game. He suggested that people can enjoy following legal and political issues for similar reasons.
That was the part I wrote back to him about. I’d been so focused on making the law easier to understand that I hadn’t thought enough about making it something people would actually want to follow. I started paying more attention to the story behind the case, and the question that might make you stop and think. On Future Counsel, I start with what happened and what the court had to decide. Then I explain what the court decided, how it got there, and why it matters. I define legal terms as they come up, too. I also didn't want to make every case sound dramatic just to get someone to read it. Sometimes the thing that interests me is a word I thought I already understood. One of those words is “voluntary.”
In Colorado v. Connelly, a man approached an officer and confessed to a murder. He was experiencing severe mental illness. A psychiatrist testified that his illness interfered with his ability to make free and rational choices, even though he understood his rights. The Supreme Court held that coercive police activity was necessary for a confession to be involuntary under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause. His mental condition alone wasn't enough.
While I can follow why the Court focused on what the police had done, I continue to go back to the part about the defendant’s ability to make choices, and that still bothers me. If you told me someone did something “voluntarily,” I’d presume that they had a choice. Now there’s this legal meaning of a word I’ve been using my whole life, but understanding the distinction doesn’t make me comfortable with it.
Maybe you read that and think the Court got it right, and I want my explanation to leave you room to think that. This is why I put my opinion at the end of my reviews, but I have to give you enough of the reasoning to disagree with me. While these reviews are nonpartisan, I have opinions about these cases, sometimes strong ones. I'm still responsible for explaining the part(s) I disagree with.
So that’s why I also ask professors and attorneys what they think of Future Counsel itself. One professor liked the graphics and case descriptions but questioned whether a fairly random selection of cases was an effective way to learn law—not whether I’d explained an individual case thoroughly enough.
This led to helpful reflection. I wanted to bring attention to cases students and families might never hear about and make them easier to understand, but I also agreed that the initial selection could feel random. It made me want to explain the purpose better and think about organizing the cases by topic, like what the police can do during a traffic stop or when a confession can be used in court.
I think there's still something to answer here, though. You could read a review, understand the story, agree or disagree with the ruling, and then what? Would you recognize the same idea somewhere else? I want to say I’m helping people understand the law, but that's a heavy lift. I can explain what I hope Future Counsel does. Knowing what someone actually takes away from it is much harder.
I’ve been thinking about that with my AP research project, too. I'm planning a study about teaching “beyond a reasonable doubt” to fourth- and fifth-graders. I’m putting together two versions of a short lesson. Both use the same fictional case and teach the same legal ideas, and one adds game features. Then I’d use different scenarios to see whether students could apply what they’d learned. It’s still being developed, so I don't have substantial results or evidence to share.
The part I’m getting stuck on is how to assess student understanding. A child might know the idea, but misunderstand a question because of how I word it. Or give a short explanation that doesn't sound very impressive, but it’s actually right. I don't want to confuse being good at reading with understanding the legal concept. So even the questions I ask afterward need more thought than I initially expected.
So we have gone from my garage to fourth-graders and a research project. To me, they all belong in the same conversation, even though I don't have all the connections worked out. I want to help educate young citizens like myself because I know what it feels like to be lost in the laws and outcomes. Now I keep running into questions about whether what I’m creating with Future Counsel will help somebody else. The answers change what I choose to work on next.
That’s what I’d like to share with you in this column. You can find my weekly case reviews at futurecounsel.org, while I use this space in encore to talk through the questions I have about them. Some conversations have made me change my mind about issues, and there are still things I don't quite know how to explain. You don't have to arrive knowing anything about law. Curiosity is enough to start with.
I wish my family hadn’t gone through what happened. I don't feel like I need to find something good in every part of it, and I don't know whether knowing more about law would have changed that day. What I can do now is keep trying to make this stuff easier to understand. If you're reading this because something happened to your family and you felt lost too, I hope there's something useful here for you. And if you're just curious about a case, that's enough too. I’d like to hear what you make of it.
Email your questions to info@encorepub.org with the subject line: Future Counsel.
