Moot Court Season

Moot Court season is upon us.  Law students from around the country are headed off to compete in a mock appellate arguments on a wide range of topics.  This past weekend students competed at the Jeffrey G. Miller National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition (more commonly known as Pace).  Students also competed at the San Francisco and Portland regionals for the National Appellate Advocacy Competition put on by the ABA.  (Congrats to the teams from my school that both made it to the round of 5 at the San Francisco regional). 

This coming weekend Boston and Philadelphia host their NAAC regional competitions. And, my school hosts the National Native American Law Student Association Moot Court Competition.  We are looking forward to hosting 40+ teams from across the country to argue a difficult, but fascinating, Indian Law problem.

The University of Houston has already started tabulating the top moot court programs for its rankings.  This year the current top 5 is Texas heavy:

1. Baylor
2. Loyola University
3. South Texas
4. University of Georgia
5. University of Houston

I really love moot court.  I love coaching, I love judging, and I love seeing students develop over the course of the weeks that they work on the problem.  Moot court has many benefits for students.  While it certainly teaches them teamwork, it also teaches them to be problem solvers and work independently.  For most moot court competitions, students cannot receive any outside help on their briefs.  For some competitions, they can't even receive substantive help during their oral advocacy practices. Moot court also teaches time management.  Some of the major competitions, like the NAAC and the NNALSA, require students to brief over the winter holidays. Finally, moot court helps students learn to become excellent public speakers.  I have heard that the number one fear that people have is public speaking. As a person who formerly hated public speaking, I know that the only thing that has helped me improve is practice, practice, practice.  Moot court does that for law students.

Moot court has benefits for the local legal community too.  Volunteering to judge provides you with more than a few free CLE credits, it allows you to think about and discuss an interesting area of law.  Moot court problems are often centered around an interesting and unsettled area of the law--the kind of question your least favorite professor might put on a law school exam.  It can be fun to get back into law school mode and ponder these questions (especially when you are asking the questions, rather than the other way around).  I also think that moot court gives us hope for the next generation of lawyers.  They can, and will, do great things.  That is exciting.

But, despite the excitement, moot court isn't perfect.  It isn't perfect because we all know that the briefs are way more important than the arguments in real life.  It also isn't perfect because, just like in real life, gender stereotypes can rear their ugly heads.  I was reminded of that this week when I saw an article on Law.com announcing that the first female appellate law clerk had passed away at the age of 94. Carmel Ebb, who graduated first in her class at Columbia Law in 1945, is believed by most to be the first woman to clerk for a federal appellate court judge.  She clerked for Judge Jerome Frank on the Second Circuit.  She interviewed for a Supreme Court Clerkship but, according to her obituary, “Her hopes were dashed when the justice concluded their conversation by saying he had no doubt she would be a fine clerk, but that his wife would never allow him to work in such close proximity to a woman.” Ms. Ebb went on to have a successful career, including making partner at a New York firm.

So how do gender stereotypes play a role in moot court?  Next post I will look at an article on this topic.