LSU Law second-year students Joshua Silverman, left, and Christian Gallusser, right, pose with 3L and student coach David Gonzalez, center, after winning the 2025 Fordham National Basketball Negotiation Competition Championship in New York City on Jan. 25.
When Toronto, Canada-native Joshua Silverman traveled to Baton Rouge three years ago to take a tour of the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center as a prospective student, one aspect of the visit immediately inspired him.
“One of the things that really stuck out to me was that wall of signs that commemorates all of the advocacy teams from LSU Law that have won a national championship,” recalled Silverman, now in his second year of studies at LSU law. “And I still remember turning to my father and the recruiter and saying, ‘I’m going to win a national championship here.’”
In New York City on Saturday, Jan. 25, Silverman made good on his word and helped LSU Law bring home its first national championship since 2018 when he and fellow LSU Law 2L Christian Gallusser won the 2025 Fordham National Basketball Negotiation Competition—for which Silverman also received the competition’s Best Advocate award.
“It was kind of blur, to be honest—an exciting blur,” Silverman said. “I don’t even remember if they announced the Best Advocate award first or the National Championship. I just remember immediately walking over to the other team and shaking their hands, because it had been a very intense final round of competition.”
After the panel of judges tallied their scores, LSU Law had beat the finalist team from Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University by a single point. On their way to the finals, Silverman and Gallusser also bested teams from The University of Texas at Austin School of Law and Marquette University Law School, among others.
“One hundred percent, I expected us to be announced as the winners,” Gallusser said of the moment just before he was named a national champion. “Not to say anything negative about the other teams, because they were great competitors. I just felt that we were more prepared and focused, and I think that says a lot about the quality of advocacy programs we have at LSU Law.”
Gallusser and Silverman’s win marks LSU Law’s first national championship in a transactional negotiation competition.
Students from 30 law schools across the country converged in New York City for this year’s Fordham National Basketball Negotiation Competition, in which students assume roles of attorneys representing NBA team owners, player agents, broadcast networks, and corporate sponsors. Teams participated in a series of mock negotiations involving NBA player-team trades, player endorsements, and intra-league negotiations.
“For the first two rounds, we had the problems in advance and could work on them before we got to New York City. But once we reached the quarterfinals, it started to get pretty intense because we didn’t get the problem until the evening beforehand and we only had about 12 hours to prepare,” Silverman explained. “And in the semi-finals and finals, we only had 30 minutes to prepare after receiving the problem, which made it really exciting.”
“I thought that gave us an advantage,” Gallusser added, “because that’s where I’m at home and doing my best—problem solving on the fly.”
Silverman and Gallusser are both out-of-state students who were drawn to LSU Law by the exceptional scholarship packages they were offered. They were also both college athletes as undergraduates; Silverman played hockey at the University of Guelph just outside his native Toronto and Gallusser played football at Oakland University in his hometown of Rochester Hills, Michigan.
“We work well together, and we make a pretty good team,” Gallusser said. “For this competition, I focused on the people, and he focused on the numbers. We had kind of a ‘good cop-bad cop’ approach to negotiating our deals that I thought worked really well.”
Both students competed in the internal Ira S. Flory Mock Trial competition last fall, but neither had ever been a part of a traveling team for an external competition previously. They were coached by LSU Law alumnus David Fleshman (’11), who teaches Sports Law as an adjunct professor at his alma mater and is a partner at Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson in Baton Rouge. David Gonzalez, a third-year student who serves as Director of External Dispute Resolution Competitions, also coached the team and traveled with them to New York City.
“This championship is a historic achievement for LSU Law,” said Gonzalez in an essay he wrote about his experience as a coach. “While our law school has a distinguished record in trial advocacy and moot court, this win demonstrates our expanding strength in dispute resolution and transactional advocacy. I am confident that this victory will serve as a foundation for continued success in the future, and I look forward to seeing LSU law further establish itself as a powerhouse in transactional advocacy.”
Silverman and Gallusser said they couldn’t have brought home a national championship without the support and guidance of coaches like Fleshman and Gonzalez, as well as those who financially support travelling advocacy teams.
“I’m incredibly thankful and grateful to everyone at LSU Law, because we didn’t do this on our own,” said Silverman. “We have an incredible advocacy program at LSU Law, and we have exceptional coaches and faculty who go the extra mile to make sure that we are offered these kinds of opportunities—and who prepare us to capitalize on them when they arise.”
Along with Silverman, Gallusser, and Gonzalez, LSU Law students Carl David and Brielle Lee also traveled to New York City to compete, but their team was narrowly missed advancing out of the preliminary round of competition.
As for Silverman and Gallusser, they don’t have any other advocacy competitions on their calendars for the rest of the academic year. But both are eager to defend their title next year and establish LSU Law as the team to beat at the Fordham National Basketball Negotiation Competition
“Yeah, that’s the plan. We’re planning to go back next year and win it again,” Silverman said. “Hopefully we’ll start an LSU Law dynasty at the competition that will continue on after we graduate.”
