My confidence has never been lower than in the lead up to the 2024 Grand Moot
The Grand Moot is a special beast. Posters with your name on it go up around the school, it’s all any other law students talk to you about in the lead up to it, and a recording of the moot lives on YouTube forever. The spotlight is squarely on you, and there’s a certain pressure that comes along with that.
But I think the pressure comes from something slightly more precise and unique to this moot— living up to all the past Grand Mooters, who, year after year, display incredible poise in the face of a distinguished panel of judges in front of a live audience. They set a standard from which I never saw anyone falter from. And even though it’s not advertised and no one ever talks about it explicitly, living up to that standard felt like an implicit condition of being selected for the Grand Moot at the end of my 2L year. The lights were never too bright for my predecessors, so they couldn’t be for me either.
During preparation in the lead up to this year’s Grand Moot, I felt like upholding that standard was an impossible task. Factum-writing and practicing oral submissions overlapped for a few weeks, and during that overlap, nothing was going well for me. An effective factum uses clear and plain language to persuade, but my sentences obfuscated my arguments because I was nowhere close to really understanding the case law. To effectively respond to the panel’s questions in oral submissions, you need to think about how your arguments bend or break—I couldn’t do that because I barely understood the arguments I was reworking in our factum the previous night. It was frustrating because this was the third moot I’ve done; I knew what made effective advocacy, but I just couldn’t put it together. It didn’t help that I was getting minimal feedback from those judging our oral practices because I wasn’t giving them anything to work with. They were nice about it, but I knew I was losing opportunities for valuable feedback because I couldn’t wrap my head around my submissions. I felt like I was lagging behind my peers.
But the real nail in the coffin for my confidence was judging upper year competitive moot tryouts, which happened around this same time. The students I judged were overwhelmingly polished and well-prepared. If I asked a question, they would answer persuasively. There could not have been a bigger gulf between the performances I watched and my own run-throughs just a few days prior — and I do not use hyperbole when I say that. I am fairly objective and realistic when evaluating my performance, whether that be in a moot setting or elsewhere. During these tryouts, I didn’t just feel like I was a significantly worse mooter, I knew that I was.
Every year, incredible advocates miss the opportunity to participate in the Grand Moot because the margins are so thin for the tryouts in the spring. With that weighing on my mind, I realized that if I didn’t improve, I would be wasting an opportunity another equally-talented mooter could have used to their fullest. That “realization”, or whatever you want to call it, honestly ate away at me for several days. Although typically I could turn those negative feelings into motivation to improve, I just couldn’t do it this time. It is one thing to flounder, but another thing to not have any trust to realistically pull yourself out of a funk.
I can’t remember a time in my life where my confidence had been lower, law school or otherwise. Building it back up was a gradual process; I didn’t have a moment of self-assurance where I told myself “you can do this” and immediately felt better. Spending more time with my arguments helped, as well as leaning on the advice of my teammates. Through steady practice, I felt like I wasn’t squandering an opportunity anymore come the day of the moot, and I was proud of how I performed.
Now, I didn’t write this article to say that because “it all worked out in the end” for me, you can trust it will for you too. I wanted to write this because even though I consider myself to be a decently confident person, that self-belief was broken so thoroughly in preparation for the Grand Moot it made me reflect on whether, despite being such a prestigious opportunity, doing the moot was worth it. Reflecting on the whole experience now, I think I can tell you that it was. I also stand by what I have written elsewhere, that mooting has been my greatest source of enrichment in law school. That’s still true—if you’re thinking about mooting, do it, because it is an incredible growth opportunity. But you should be aware of how mooting will challenge you to grow, because I don’t think the struggles I’ve relayed here are particularly unique; I certainly experienced more mild versions of these emotions in practicing for the Stewart Cup in my 1L year. I’m sure others reading this article will relate to some of what I’ve said as well. Many aspects of mooting, whether that be the tryout process or the competition day itself, put a student’s confidence directly in the crosshairs. More than anything else, the Grand Moot taught me that how you respond to having your confidence shaken is almost as important to mooting as the actual quality of your advocacy, for better or for worse. We should all be a little more explicit about that reality. After all, a path is more easily walked when you know what lies ahead. And while I am not diametrically opposed to the idea that the occasional confidence whacking is a good thing for personal growth, I think we often forget just how difficult it can be to deal with—I know I certainly did.