Virginia and Washington, DC, Mock Trial Joins the Virginia Museum of History & Culture
The Virginia Law-Related Education Institute (VLRE) is joining the Virginia Museum of History & Culture (VMHC), giving the Virginia and Washington, DC, High School Mock Trial Program a permanent home within VMHC’s growing statewide civics education network.
The merger is part of VMHC’s historic investment in civics education and builds on its nationally recognized work commemorating America’s 250th anniversary. Mock Trial becomes the fourth major civics education organization or initiative to join VMHC’s statewide educational hub. The John Marshall Center for Constitutional History & Civics became part of VMHC in 2023, followed by the Rule of Law Project and Virginia Civics in 2025. Together, these programs are creating a more unified, sustainable, and accessible civics education network for students, educators, and communities across Virginia and beyond.
Joining VMHC gives the Mock Trial program greater institutional support and connects it with an organization already serving students and educators across the Commonwealth.
The merger will help Mock Trial in numerous ways:
Build a sustainable foundation for the program’s future
Reach more schools, students, teachers, and communities
Expand access to high-quality civics and legal education
Develop new resources and training opportunities for teams and coaches
Strengthen connections among students, educators, attorneys, judges, and other volunteers
Collaborate with complementary statewide civics programs
Create more opportunities for students to explore law, citizenship, leadership, and public service
The partnership will be particularly valuable as Mock Trial works to reach schools and communities that haven’t previously had access to the program. VMHC’s statewide relationships, educational expertise, and established civics infrastructure provide new opportunities to support developing teams and introduce more young people to legal education.
Looking Ahead
For students, coaches, schools, and volunteers, the heart of the program remains the same: students will continue preparing both sides of a case, testing their ideas in competition, learning from legal professionals, and discovering what they can accomplish when given the opportunity to stand up and be heard.
What changes is the foundation beneath that work. With VMHC, Mock Trial gains a long-term institutional home and becomes part of an ambitious statewide effort to make meaningful civics education available to more young people.
This new chapter honors what the Mock Trial community has built over the past two decades while creating room for the program to grow.
