Preparing to moot 'down under'
Four LLM Maritime Law students are getting ready to represent the Southampton Law School at a major international mooting competition in Australia this summer.
Robert Veal, Angeliki Kofopoulou, Mateusz Bek and Josua Schoeman will be arguing their case against teams from around 20 other leading global universities at the high level contest at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. They will be hoping to go one better than Southampton’s 2012 team which was awarded runners-up honours and also took the prize for the best overall speaker.
The challenge began in Southampton back in January when interested students got together to prepare a 60 page memorandum addressing the legal questions posed by the competition brief, a complex problem involving several aspects of maritime law including legislation covering carriage of goods, deviation, collision and arbitration. Australian law is used throughout, so the students had to investigate new precedents. After three months of hard work, the document was submitted and interviews were held to decide who should represent Southampton in Brisbane. All four students chosen for the team have considerable mooting or debating experience and are looking forward to the challenge.
“We’re working hard to master all the arguments, meeting once or twice an week to practice. It’s tough but enjoyable as well,” says Angeliki. “But we’re going out there to win!” declares Robert. Members of the team will have to think on their feet during the moot to answer points made by the other students or adapt their arguments to changing circumstances. “Whatever happens, it’s tremendous experience and will certainly help us in our careers,” adds Mateusz.
“This year's mooters are an exceptionally strong team and we are very proud to be sending them to Brisbane. It is also very pleasing that in our third consecutive year of participation, the Law School is more committed than ever to this competition and has already decided to send a team selected from the LLMs of 2012-2013” says Johanna Hjalmarsson, Research Fellow at the School of Law.'
After the contest is over in mid July, all four students will stay in Brisbane for a week’s work experience at the top law firm Norton Rose. Robert, Angeliki, Mateusz and Josua would like to thank many Law School academics for their help and support as the memorandum was compiled and their mooting skills were honed.