My First Mooting Experience

I didn't even know what 'moot court' was until two weeks ago.

Hello and welcome to my next post. In this post, we will be talking about moot court, something I wish somebody told me before joining law school or at least, I had done research on.

So moot court is when you are given a case, you choose your position, do some research and present your research to the court and why you think the criminal should have a sentence/be free to go. Simple enough?

WRONG.

I had just attended a moot court session a couple of weeks ago and I knew that I was going to be assessed on it but I severely underestimated moot court in general.

Well here’s a news flash for you, don’t.

So here is moot in general for you.

What is Moot Court?

By definition, it simulates a court hearing in which you are expected to research a given issue, prepare written work as well present your oral argument.

We were given a situation for our first moot, and then we had to choose whether to be appellants or respondents. To provide ourselves with some challenge, we decided to choose appellants (I still don’t know if it was the best decision we made)

Then I had to choose with my partner if I wanted to do senior or junior appellant. I chose junior because a) it was a bit of a challenge and b) I have never done this before.

The ground was already given to us. What are the grounds you ask? Grounds are the things you’re arguing about. The basis of your argument. Your skeleton argument is a paper where you list down your grounds and the support for them (this could be legislation, case law, etc)

Also here is another tip for you: It’s okay to go for the easy route especially if it’s your first time doing an activity. I wanted to challenge myself and take the difficult route and while there is nothing wrong with it, it just might present unnecessary challenges for you. Like literally nobody expects you to be good with something you have just started.

Then you have to start researching your position super well. Say you have a murder case and you’re defending the murderer, look for laws that are associated with murder and that your client is most likely going to get convicted under. Then research cases with similar facts because the fate of what has happened to the people in these cases has a chance of happening to your client.

Please don’t research a day or two before your actual moot. It’s obvious to notice last-minute work and it’s honestly not fair to your partner. Also don’t use ChatGPT unless you’re simplifying something for your understanding. I think relying only on ChatGPT is a disaster waiting to happen.

Don’t use cases you don’t know all the facts, judgment and legal principles about. It either shows that you have used someone else’s argument or lack of preparation.

Imagine the judge asking you for the facts of the case and you’re unable to say it. It makes you look unprofessional and in the real world, looks awkward and just bad. Don’t put yourself in that position; just research the content yourself.

Now that I’m looking back at it, the research was probably the most fun part. Like yes, there were times when I wanted to rip my hair out because I felt like I was going around in circles or that my research was entirely wrong. But once you find gold in a case, stick to it. Don’t doubt yourself a lot, or you will just all of your progress by erasing everything.

Please ask any questions you have, either to a trusted senior student or even your tutors. From what I have seen, most of them are more than willing to help you and can help with your skeleton argument. (Although your professors will most likely not help with the skeleton argument, just queries in general!)

I cannot give more advice on skeleton arguments as I think my skeleton argument wasn’t up to the mark. The feedback I got after the moot was to make it short and stick to making it one page.

Also please, please clarify the number of authorities you can use for your skeleton argument. Authorities are the support for your grounds like cases and laws. It can vary differently because we were told it was six overall and then last minute, we found out that there were no set numbers.

The Moot itself

Here is a tip that will save you in almost all aspects of your life: Prepare way ahead. Minutes before presenting our arguments, we were stuck, trying to print the skeleton argument.

But in a hurry, we did manage to reach the room on time.

At first, I had been nervous however, I noticed, with time, that feeling of fear had been washed away.

My argument, I felt was good. Not the best and it definitely. had room for improvement but I think for my first moot, it wasn’t that bad.

If there were things I could change, it would be to change the introduction. I believe I could have made that much stronger and made the judge more on our side. I think some realignment of content was also something I could have done.

But regardless, I liked the confidence with which I spoke. The judge will ask you questions mid-way or at the end, my only tip for that is to be very confident. Confident people are more likely to get marks anywhere. But we were strongly advised to admit when we didn’t know how to answer a question because you can’t blabber nonsense on the law to a judge who probably has tons of experience.

I didn’t prepare a set list of questions that the judge might ask because I knew it was about my skeleton argument and my speech, so I felt my answers were also okay for that aspect.

After the moot

It finally got finished. I had been dreading the day for weeks now. We got general feedback which is what I shared in the previous section.

I enjoyed it thoroughly and I would definitely like to do it again. I admit, I probably didn’t do as great as I thought I would but it was something I really liked so now I am looking at different things I could do to improve my skills when it comes to mooting.

Also note that because this was our first moot, the problem given to us was much less complex compared to what the second/third-year law students were doing.

That’s all for now! Comment what questions you have about moot court or law school in general.