Bernard Henry (JD ’07) and Mili Echeverria Meyer (JD ’18) coach the School of Law’s Hispanic National Bar Association’s (HNBA) Uvaldo Herrera Moot Court Competition teams.

ALUMNI PROFILE Bernard Henry (JD ’07) and Mili Echeverria Meyer (JD ’18)

Lessons for life

Moot court coaches Bernard Henry and Mili Echeverria Meyer ensure competitors’ skills go far beyond basics

As a law student in 2005, Bernard Henry still remembers first prize in the Hispanic National Bar Association’s (HNBA) Uvaldo Herrera Moot Court Competition: an Xbox provided by sponsor Microsoft.

Today, HNBA teams vie for $60,000 in prize money, including a $10,000 first prize, and make innumerable and invaluable professional connections at the conference where the competition takes place. And today, Henry (JD ’07) coaches Loyola’s teams, who are consistently strong.

“It’s a very difficult cut from the starting lineup of 32 teams, but Loyola’s almost always in the top eight,” says Henry, a trial attorney at the Chicago firm of Rieck & Crotty. In the past decade, Loyola has placed twice in the top eight, twice in the final four, and three times in third place overall. Last year’s team, Andres Garcia-Rivera and Alexandra Alvarez, made the top eight and will compete again this spring.

Henry has coached the two-person Loyola HNBA teams since 2012. “I’m a better coach than I was a competitor,” he says, laughing. “It’s transformative to be able to see students for what they can be instead of what they are and help build that up.”

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A wider skill set

For the past three years, Henry has shared coaching duties with a former student competitor he coached, Mili Echeverria Meyer (JD ’18), senior corporate counsel for NinjaHoldings.

“I adore coaching with Bernie,” Meyer says. “He’s taught me so much and become a great friend. I think we were both pleasantly surprised at how in step we were at coaching, right from the start.”

“Mili competed twice in HNBA and had excellent scores,” says Henry, “but what makes her different is she understands the end goal is not competition. It’s learning and applying lessons for life: not just the ins and outs of antidiscrimination law, for example, but also answering questions, seeing both sides, and being dispassionate in your analysis and passionate in your argument.”

The annual HNBA conference that hosts the moot court competition is ground zero for lawyers-to-be to learn other irreplaceable lessons, say Henry and Meyer.

Every day, the conference includes events at which students are welcome, from an opening reception to a black-tie gala. “Hundreds of lawyers are there who want to recruit, and students get hired out of this conference,” says Henry. “Mili and I teach students to advocate for themselves at the conference—Schmoozing 101—and to make those connections.”

“At this conference, students meet judges and corporate counsel from across the country.”

As a student competitor, “I expected the substantive elements of the competition, like improving my writing and oral advocacy skills, but I wasn’t expecting to learn networking or creating mentoring relationships,” says Meyer. “At this conference, students meet judges and corporate counsel from across the country. I don’t think I’d have had the nerve to apply for my current position without the skills I gained in moot court and at the conference.”

Through the conference, “We really do form a familia-like relationship,” Henry says. “All my former students are like cousins to each other. We even have an annual barbecue at my house.”

The Loyola way

After many years of service to the HNBA teams—a long-term commitment that many Loyola graduates take on as coaches for the law school’s moot court, mock trial, and negotiation teams—Henry is soon passing the torch to Meyer so he can spend more time with his young family. Meyer says she’ll follow the Loyola tradition of recruiting alumni she coached as students to come back and coach alongside her.

“This team really values keeping it in the family,” says Meyer. “That’s not in any exclusionary way; it’s just that people who join this team love it and stay as involved as they want to be after they graduate. The mentorship and camaraderie are kind of the Loyola way.”—Gail Mansfield (January 2024)

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