Why I won't be attending the Mooting Final

So the mooting final of my intra-university competition will be held today and I will not be attending. I have attended all mooting finals in the past whilst at university but I shall not be attending this one. The reason that I mention these facts is that one could be mistaken in thinking that the reason that I am not attending the final is that I am jealous/have not got over the fact that I am not in it. Well they would be right to an extent. I have not gotten over it; but that is not the reason that I will not be attending.

The reason that I am not attending is that I am drowning in work - all of it very important and all of it to be actioned within a tight and very upcoming deadline - and somethings (things that I enjoy in my spare time, like mooting) have to be removed from my very busy schedule.

Before I go on, I would like it to be noted that after I found out that I had not reached the final and that my even more lacklustre opponent had, I did send him a congratulatory email and wished him well for the final. Of course, I might not necessarily agree with the result but that decision was for the judge to make and make it he did. See: the fact that the result was not in my favour did not prevent me from maintaining minimal amounts of human decency and compassion.

As is customary at this stage of mooting competitions, the doors are flung open to everyone and anyone that wished to attend - students, lecturers, professors and tutors etc. The biggest prize of all though is the opportunity to present arguments before an actual real-life judge! Its such a huge opportunity and it hurts to have come so close, yet so far away from experiencing it.

Currently I am working on writing two essays which need to be completed before the end of term deadline which is this week. I shall never know whether I would have been able to prepare for the moot alongside this and I do not care to think which of all these important things I have going on would not have been done well (or performed well).

Its actually become more of a problem now that I am nearing the end of my degree. I start the week - like now - so energised and ready to lots of work. It does not change the end result at the end of the week however when I find that no single project has been completed and instead there are lots and lots of unfinished pieces of work that still need my attention. I guess its those skills called time management and organisation which I suck at.

I am very much looking forward to my upcoming holidays. Only four days away.

Mooting - semi-final - results

Just found out today that I didn't get through to the final of my law society mooting competition at university. This was the first time that I had entered a mooting competition and I am in my third year of studying law at university.

What makes matters worse is the realisation that I had the law on my side and I should have done more with it. I should have been clearer in my submissions through being far better prepared than I was; and, I should have realised that although I had strong submissions, they were not there to 'hide' my weaker submissions. I should have thought about them more and I should have been prepared to answer obvious questions on them.

That said, I fiercely contend the presiding judge's decision to say that my opposite on the other side won the moot. It was clear that his preparation was incomplete; he sought to highlight really minor and really controversial distinctions in criminal law that are so silly as to be perverse. He didn't realise that he had such an upwards task that the only viable argument before the House of Lords would be to argue for the use of the 1966 statement on Judicial Precedent which allows the House of Lords to depart from its earlier judgments and argue public policy, public policy and public policy. Instead, not a single statement on public policy was made.

How on earth could I have lost the moot?

Well seriously, I don't believe I did. The most fundamental tenets of my argument were well presented I thought. However, I was caught off-guard when his Lordship requested that I strike two submissions off the five that I intended to give. Not only did I pick the wrong two - that wasn't my fault of course, they were all as important as each other - when I got to the end of the three submissions that I had decided to give, I then requested leave to give the two I had stricken off too. That really pissed his Lordship off. Lesson learnt though.

I shall not be doing any mooting for a while but rest assured my route to the semi-final of this competition has been most enjoyable and I have learnt a lot.