Hello! I’m Frank and I’m the Mooting Coordinator at City. Hopefully most of you have now been to the mooting talk during Induction Week. Mooting is something we are very passionate about at City and strive to give our students as many opportunities as possible to get involved.

Where Can I Find Information about Mooting activities at City?

Please check the Mooting 2024/25 Moodle page regularly. It contains the most up-to-date information about mooting.

Where/How do I start?

There are a series of workshops you can sign up for in order to learn the basics. These will be run by some of our star mooters from last year and will happen at various times during the first few weeks of the term. This will get you ready for the internal moots we run for City students and the selection process offered to those who want to moot externally, in competitions taking place in the UK or internationally. You can sign up on the Bar and Mooting Society website. You can also find the link on the Mooting 2024/25 Moodle page.

OK tell me about the internal moots…

We run two internal competitions for our students:

• The City Scholars Moot
• The Senior Moot

The City Scholars Moot is for LLB and GELLB students, as well as LLMs with no previous mooting experience. It will kick off in late Oct/early November. It will be run by the Bar and Mooting Society.

The Senior Moot is for all law postgraduates and will take place later in 2024. There are a limited number of places which you need to apply for. It will be run by Andrew Hope and Rosie Longman. You should expect an email from them in October.

Additionally, the Maitland Advocacy Prize is a competition open to all GDL students at CLS. It offers a unique opportunity to moot, prepare legal arguments with barristers and take part in a Final mock hearing before a High Court Judge. All winners will receive a cash prize. GDL students will receive a message from the Course Office in October about the details.

Are there competitions I can enter without going through a City selection process?

Yes! There are a number of moots you can enter independently and we would encourage you to do so. A couple of them have released their problems and application info already. Some examples include:

For those of you interested in Environmental law there is the UKELA Moot Competition – this is longstanding competition and the problem and entry form are now out. Open to all – take a look! Interesting link for CLS students – the competition is sponsored by No5 Chambers and ENDS Report. UKELA Trustee and No5 Chambers Barrister Odette Chalaby set the Moot problem and Howard Leithead is Moot Master. Both are City Law School GDL/Bar course alumni.

There is also the Human Rights Lawyers Association Judicial Review Moot.

The competition is open to aspiring lawyers throughout the United Kingdom. It begins with a written round involving teams of two submitting paper applications for permission to bring judicial review proceedings. The 8 highest scoring teams from the written round are then chosen to make an oral application for permission before human rights practitioners. The two best teams from the oral round will subsequently go on to compete in the final, which involves the substantive judicial review. The Final is judged by eminent human rights barristers and members of the judiciary.

Register via the online form by the 30^th September 2024 at 11:59pm. Open to students on all programmes and graduates who don’t have an offer of pupillage/TC as yet. Try to find a partner before signing up but if unsuccessful, the HRLA will try to find you one.

Quadrant Chambers has run a virtual moot event for the last few years, taking place in January. So hopefully this will run in 2024! In 2022, it was won by Micha Lazarus from City Law School (you can read their account via the Quadrant website). There only 64 spaces however, with a limit on the number from each institution (it’ll be first-come, first served). The format last year was a speed moot of 7 minutes per round, with a total of 6 rounds for the most successful mooters. They also hold an open evening with talks covering pupillage, life at Quadrant and the commercial bar, and other relevant topics.

The National Speed Mooting Competition has run for a number of years, and is open to students for a fee. They also run various events and an Advocacy Club. Find out more via their website. There are separate competitions for LLB/GDL and LPC and Bar students.

These are only a few quick examples of the external moots out there that you can enter freely. We will post all information we receive here at Lawbore and on the Mooting 2024/25 Moodle page. Please keep checking regularly!

OK so what if I want to moot against teams from other universities on behalf of City?

Hurray! You will be happy to know there are lots of opportunities for this. There are a number of competitions we enter and we will publish the relevant information on the Mooting 2024/25 Moodle page. We don’t have the full picture yet as to what moots will run – some are annual, some skip a year. Relevant information will be posted on Moodle as we proceed in the academic year.

Some of the international moots will run outside of the UK. City will support the selected teams with guidance (where we have the expertise on hand) and fund the travel and accommodation where it is required.

Yikes! There’s so much choice! How do I choose what to apply for?

Remember there will be a lot of competition for places and for each team we’ll only be looking for between 2-5 students, so you’d certainly want to be applying for multiple teams to raise your chances! One important thing to note is that we only allow students to represent us in one moot. This is for two reasons – so as not to overwhelm you (remember you’ll be studying hard plus also maybe working, doing pro bono etc), and to try and spread opportunities. If you’re lucky enough to get selected more than once, you get to choose.

How do I get updates on mooting?

Please check the Mooting 2024/25 Moodle page regularly. We also may send out occasional messages via email.

Any big advice to pass on?

If you are in any way interested, don’t delay. Most opportunities for mooting are pretty front-loaded, so if you’re not in it from the start of term you’ll miss out. The workshops will give you a good grounding in the basics, you can then throw yourself into the internal moots to get the experience of competitive mooting. This sounds scary but it isn’t too bad – remember all the judges in the first couple of rounds are fairly recent graduates, so they remember how daunting it was. The advice and guidance you’ll receive will be so important.