The Nitty-Gritty

Up until now, I've been painting sweeping strokes of law school life. Today I'm going to get uncomfortably close to the minutiae.

I'll start with an overview. My esteemed educational institution has two moot court programs. One is large and well recognized; there is a well-governed format for membership that must comply with bylaws as enforced by the Moot Court Board of Governors. That Board is headed by three student Chairs of the Board, and they are guided by a faculty adviser. They have a large group of participants who are sent to various nationwide competitions. The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court is a separate team, and much smaller. Rather than having more than one moot court team, the Jessup team is limited to 5 students and an adjunct adviser. It also focuses exclusively on international law. At my school, the larger program is considered an academic team; whereas the Jessup program is viewed as a club.

But wait just a minute; you say: what is a moot court?

If you want the complex answer, visit the hyperlink. The simple answer: oral arguments about an invented case. It's a competition for law students to hone their skills in advocacy.

* * *

Last year, I participated in the Jessup team. It was amazing. I absolutely loved it, and would love to do it again. We competed at George Washington University in downtown Washington D.C., and we beat numerous teams that included some of the Ivy League. We made it as far as the semi-finals, where the #1 team knocked us out. The school down the road eventually took home the world championship in the arguments, but we were still thrilled to have gotten that far.
I think the qualities that really made our team excellent, despite perhaps not being a team of inherently brilliant advocates naturally, was our teachability and dedication. We were all there for pretty much every one of our numerous practices; we listened to criticisms of our styles, our presence, and our knowledge. We spent days honing our work. We took nothing for granted, and we had many guest judges that all pointed out different ways we could improve. By the time we'd met our matches in competition, we were so solidly prepared and unshakable that NOT making the semifinals would have been a surprise to me.

We were thrilled.

* * *

Unfortunately, despite the rigorous academic grind the team involves, a student can only get academic credit for participation once. Thus, at the encouragement of a professor I am close with, I am trying out for the larger, school-touted team which has no such limitation. Recall that I said TRYING OUT only.

The tryouts alone for these teams are exhausting. The written component involves composing an appellate brief, which requires researching and synthesizing the law on at least two issues. The oral argument tryouts, the second stage, are available only to those who submitted a good brief. Those arguments involve a weeks worth of after-work practices that are judged; and plenty of integration of judges comments and new research. It is basically a mini-competition in and of itself.

When my peer mentor told me last year that he thought the tryout process itself was an extremely good learning experience, I thought he was saying that to console himself for an unsuccessful run. I now know that what he went through simply trying out for the team was probably about a quarter of the work I had to do all semester once I had made it ON to the Jessup team. Once again, he was correct.

I sure hope I make this team; it's been quite an investment of time, and it's completely dominated the weeklong break I had before the summer session of classes begins.