I am going to root for her no matter what she does (and yes that also includes dropping skirts like what Ivana did)

I like her, but she does seem very young. I wonder how old she is? Her answers are very well thought out.

but my goodness, she is the worst lawyer I have seen in a while. She didn't even know how to prepare an opening statement (you NEVER just memorize it like it's a script from a play, you make an outline of the points you want to make then speak extemporaneously so that you sound natural and like you know the facts of your case), and then couldn't give it to save her life. her teammates made a smart move in giving her that task as that is the easiest part of a trial, and the rest of the trial could help overshadow a bad opener. if i ever had to go up against her in court, i would just laugh up my sleeve then demolish her and her case while she was still hemming and hawing, and trying to choke out what the facts of her case were. She looked like it was her very first time being in a courtroom. I have seen rookies and even interns still in school do a better job.

then, she said she was confident that she wasn't getting eliminated because her team won their case. but roy black clearly stated that winning the case is no guarantee that you won't be eliminated; somehow, she didn't hear that part. so much for listening being so important to her. it was no surprise at all that she was the first to go.

It's amazing how much people think they can learn about someone from 30 seconds of video!

Kelly's opening statement was 30 mintes long, they showed only 10 seconds of it. Kelly spent days in the law library helping her team prepare for the case, they showed none of that. Her team won the trial because of the preparations she did, which were not shown. Kelly didn't memorize her opening statement, they just made it look that way.

Are you catching on to what I'm saying? This is "reality TV": the producers and editors show you only what they want you to see. In this case they apparently want you to see backstabbing, eye rolling, finger pointing and Olivier arguing over a 3 legged dog. What they apparently don't want you to see is any real lawyering at all!

I hope you do run into Kelly in a courtroom some day. In the time I've known her (yes, she's a friend) she has won 5 courtroom trials and about 50 arbitrations.

I agree with you that more of her statement could have been shown. but those few seconds we did see were telling. She tried to present argument in the opening statement--something that should not be done in opening and can result in mistrial, and when the judge interrupted with questions and comments (which they often do), Kelly responded with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression and was flummoxed enough to have trouble responding appropriately. This reminded me of when I used to judge first-year moot court arguments, not of someone who has won 5 trials and 50 arbitrations.

Also, what "made it look" like Kelly memorized her opening statement was when Kelly said that she was trying to memorize her opening statement. If that is an inaccurate protrayal, she shouldn't have said it.

I further agree that it made "good reality tv" to show her teammates discussing how to minimize any damage she might do to their courtroom (arbitration room) performance, but I had the feeling that there was the ring of truth there.

Either way, she stunk! Regardless of how long her statement was, she fumbled through it like a nervous teenager. It was embarassing, probably even more so for the producers who cast her. I guess they always need someone to be tossed aside early that we don't care about. Congrats on achieving that.

Secondly, the only way you're likely to know all that went on during the shooting (30 minutes, blah, blah, blah) is if you're actually her. If so, "you stink".

Welcome roy, girlchef and pepper to ART!

Just to let you know, since we are a board for discussion of reality TV, we do tend to speculate based on what's shown... that's to be expected. That's all we really can debate about, so that's what we do. I think we all realize that these shows are edited, and I can't come down on one side of the fence or another as I missed the episode, but just keep in mind that this board would be boring if we needed to see ALL the footage that ended up on the cutting room floor in order to say anything about the show.

It's good to see so many people excited about this show. I'm really excited, and I'll be recapping tonight's episode. Can't wait!

Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe they decide who they want to fire first, then edit the tape to create a rationale for doing so? Do people really think that reality shows are a dog eat dog meritocracy? Geez.

I assume that has occured to us in the past, however, we can analyze as much as we want, but all we have to go on, is what we see, plain and simple.

It did occur to me pepper. They saw how awful she was and immediately decided to fire her first. A good call on the producers part. Cut the dead weight. Or as Kelly would put it,

"Cut, um... you see what you need to um... the weight is uh... it's dead right, so um, on a reality series they sometimes... I guess what I'm saying is... this weight must be jettisoned and occasionally it can be referenced as um... dead". (Cue team members rolling their eyes)

As a side note, thank God we were spared from having to watch her suffer through the 'eat me' acronym.

LOL, Roy!

Actually, having seen (most of) the second episode, I kind of wish they had kept Kelly just for the comic relief. Nobody else is quite as cringeworthy, though Olivier's outburst came close.

Pepper, the point I am driving at--and I believe Roy is with me on this--is that, notwithstanding creative editing, a good lawyer would not sound the way Kelly did for even one second out of a thirty minute opening. If she is such a good lawyer, then those few seconds of opening seen in the show would have never existed, because a good, talented lawyer NEVER sounds like that.