Interviewing

I am taking pretrial advocacy now as a part of my work in the clinic. We just finished our unit on "interviewing." During this unit, we learned how to do things like the "T-funnel method," in which you ask a general question, then follow it up with more specific questions to fill in details. (I know, you never would have thought of that!) We did mock interviews, mock depositions, we talked about asking good questions, etc. Fun fun. Today, I went to interview our client in the detention center. I was feeling confident, having just finished this interviewing unit and all. No part of our interviewing unit quite prepared me, however, for walking up to a unit on the fourth floor of juvie, entering a room with about 20 detained kids in it, asking in my most professional voice to speak to "client mc client," and having 15 voices repeat back with high picthed mocking "cliiiiiient! i looooooove you! i'm here for cliiiiiiient!" while batting their eyelashes and making kissy noises. (seriously, it's hard to explain in writing, but imagine the voice a younger sibling would use to tortue you when the boy you liked in middle school finally called you on the phone. About like that.) Teenagers! They make everything more interesting!