U of O common law students win international competition
Jesse Mellott | Fulcrum Staff
To present a well-rounded and fully formed argument in front of a panel of legal experts is a challenge for any lawyer.
For John Wallace, Alexandra Mogyoros, and Abigail Smith—common law students from the University of Ottawa—the challenge is part of the thrill. They proved they were up to the task when they participated in the University of Oxford’s international intellectual property moot last month.
For those who aren’t familiar with the lingo, Mogyoros explains, “A moot is basically a made-up legal problem where you go and pretend to be a lawyer.”
The competition requires teams to submit written arguments remotely; then 20 teams are chosen to travel to Oxford and present their arguments in front of a panel of legal experts.
“It is usually organized to be an appeal court,” Wallace explained. “The moot problem is typically a trial judgement—sort of a first-instance case—and then you’ll write factums that are supposed to be delivered to an appeal court. Then you go and do sort of a mock oral hearing in front of them as well.”
Mogyoros described moot competitions as a sport for law students. Each compettition is divided according to the legal theme and has a set of rules that must be followed.
“You get rules for your written submission—in this case we were given the problem, which was basically a fake trial decision, and then we were given five cases to start our research from,” Mogyoros said.
The team put in six months’ worth of research—not because they’re overzealous but because there were no jurisdictional limitations placed on where legal facts could be drawn from.
“There is always a bit of uncertainty going in that someone is going to pull some perfect case from some strange jurisdiction that you didn’t think about, and you’ll have to think on your feet and try to work yourself around it in the 15 minutes you have to talk,” said Wallace.
In regard to winning the competition, Wallace said he enjoyed the experience because they had to argue in front of the people they had cited in their written arguments.
“We got to moot in front of some of the biggest world authorities on a lot of the issues,” said Wallace. “We were sitting in October reading these papers and textbooks that were written by these people and citing them in the factums, and it came down to mooting in the elimination rounds and they were there in front of us.”
Mogyoros said the competition gives the kind of practical experience that is vital to being successful in a career as a lawyer.
“I don’t think I have learned anything more in law school as much as I have learned from this,” she said. “You are doing what lawyers actually do, which is research and writing arguments and presenting them in front of a panel, and to do it on an international scale… researching any issue in Canada will never seem intimidating again.”
