Recapping my first law school mooting experience
Mooting was one of the things I had always been looking forward to about law school, way before I even knew which law school I would attend. My love for mooting began in the first year of my undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph when I joined the Guelph Pre-Law Society’s mooting team. I was always interested in pursuing public interest law and knew that getting a head start on developing my litigation skills was crucial.
Coincidentally, I met my mooting partner, Hasti Jamalomidi (1L), through undergraduate mooting competitions as we had crossed paths as captains of our respective university’s teams. We both agreed that if we were to attend the same law school, we would try mooting together. Naturally, when I received an email from the International Law Society announcing that U of T Law would be participating in Lincoln Alexander School of Law’s inaugural Baby Jessup moot, I instantly messaged Jamalomidi and we signed up to participate together.
Although I had some familiarity with international law through the classes I took during my political science degree, this was my first time trying out a moot in this field and I was looking forward to the switch. The case was titled The Republic of Antrano v The Kingdom of Remissia. It is a fictional scenario that was argued at the 2024 Jessup competition. The case focused on issues relating to deprivation of citizenship, statelessness, and the right to access consul during detainment in a foreign country. Jamalomidi and I were assigned to represent the respondents, the Kingdom of Remissia.
Preparing for the moot was fun but also challenging. On one hand, Jamalomidi and I were already familiar with the rules and structure of mooting, which took off a lot of the nerves we probably would have had if we had never mooted before. We both saw mooting as a fun extracurricular activity and were excited to get back into it. On the other hand, it was still our first moot at the law school level and we found it difficult at times to balance preparing for the moot with other responsibilities, such as staying on top of readings and preparing for the 1L and LSSEP recruits. Additionally, since the Baby Jessup is an international law moot, it had its own unique set of rules that required some adjusting to. For example, each participant had 12 minutes to make their submissions instead of seven and the respondents had the opportunity to present a surrebuttal to the rebuttal of the applicants.
The first day of the competition consisted of two rounds. Since the competition only had participants from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, and the Lincoln Alexander Faculty of Law, I had the chance to see many familiar faces and friends. The atmosphere was tense but also very supportive as we were all preparing to take on the first round.
I find that in mooting, the first round is always the most nerve-racking and that with every round you gain more confidence. My experience at the Baby Jessup was no different. By the time the first round ended and several hours of waiting for the results had passed, all of the nerves wore off and we were eager to find out the verdict. Once it was announced that we were moving on to the second round, we instantly had to move to the room where the round would take place. The second round was much more intense than the first, with the judges ramping up both the amount and difficulty of the questions that they asked. In both of the rounds, Jamalomidi and I went up against U of T Law teams, which was unexpected to me because I rarely had to go up against people from my university in undergraduate moots. Nevertheless, shortly after the second round ended we were told that we were moving on to the quarter-finals and had to come back the next day.
The next day, when I arrived at Lincoln Alexander’s campus, I found out that the majority of the teams that moved on to the second day were from U of T Law. I was really happy to see this because even if our round didn’t go as planned, it was clear that students at the Faculty had been very successful in this competition. As anticipated, the quarter-final round also consisted of way more questions. At one point I was even asked three different questions at the same time. Although we were hoping to make it into the further rounds, we were still very grateful and happy to have made it this far in the competition, especially in our first law school moot.
Overall, my time at the Baby Jessup moot was very exciting and a great experience. I was happy to be able to get back into mooting and take some time out of my regular law school routine to do something different. I would highly encourage future 1Ls to do the Baby Jessup or any other moot as it is a great way to develop your oral advocacy as well as legal research and writing skills. Participating in the Baby Jessup made me look forward to taking on more mooting opportunities and to taking some courses in international law.
I wanted to extend a big thank you to the organizers at Lincoln Alexander School of Law and the International Law Society for making this possible. I also wanted to congratulate all of the participants of the cup, it was a pleasure to moot alongside all of you!
