Lessons in Resilience from Moot Court

Last year marked my 25th year of coaching moot court. This year was the first year for our program to win ABA NAAC. I think the two are related, and wanted to share some thoughts on what I've learned over the years.

First, moot court, like many skill exercises, prepares students for work in many ways. They learn principles of rhetoric that are too frequently untaught. They learn the importance of standards of review, limiting principles, and the potential impact of new law to judges. And, of course, they learn to organize and simplify their thoughts on both print and at the podium.

But moot court teaches much more than that. It teaches students time-management skills. They learn to collaborate with others. They learn accountability. And they learn to lose.

That last lesson is, I think, key. Even before COVID, psychologists were noting a serious decline in resilience among incoming college students. Many students had become afraid to take risks, because failure was seen as catastrophic. As a result, they had begun to avoid public speaking or competition, and to instead demand easier grading, do-overs, and other safety measures that ensured they would not make lasting mistakes. Or learn from them.

Then COVID hit. Whatever problems were brewing before that were magnified by the isolation and trauma many young people felt.

Studies in resilience show that it has several predictors. High self-esteem and strong social attachments help. And exposure to stressors, in moderation, can build up a sense of resilience. Some have taken to calling this latter form of resilience "grit."

Moot court teaches grit. It teaches students (the vast majority of them, at least) that they will not always win. That sometimes, this will seem subjective and unfair. And that they need to learn from those failures, grow, and try again. It teaches them that failure is fuel.

Our program's success this year was carried by a lot of that fuel. Nine years ago we made it to ABA NAAC nationals and lost. One of those competitors was so fueled by that loss that she became my co-coach, just to help us get back and try again. Three years ago we made it to ABA NAAC finals. We lost again. Those students have volunteered to guest judge every year since. And this year, my teams lost in finals at our state competition, and lost at NY Bar Nationals. Then a dry cleaner lost one student's suits, and an earthquake hit during the competition itself.

None of that mattered. By then, these students had resilience to spare. They had heard the stories, they had experienced the losses, and they wanted nothing more than to keep going, and daring for greater things. And with that resilience, built over a decade of pain in this competition, we won.

Teddy Roosevelt is often quoted for saying:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

We need to teach our students to dare greatly. Moot court helps them learn to do just that.