The Cardozo Moot Court team is gearing up for competition season. This semester, teams will be attending competitions throughout the country, including San Diego, Atlanta, Malibu, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Students will spend the bulk of September, October and November preparing with their teams for these three-day competitions. Each competition will allow students to grapple with a different pertinent issue of law.
Preparing for these events is demanding, as both brief and oral argument components are factored to determine the winning team. Students first receive a case record, which includes a detailed fact pattern as well as lower court rulings. They are assigned a side to argue and spend many weeks researching, drafting and revising their brief, which is submitted around a month before oral arguments. The teams then go into oral argument preparation. Normally, teams will have 10 “mooting” sessions in which they will argue as both petitioner and respondent in order to be capable of arguing either side.
During these sessions, the teams will be tested by some of Cardozo’s finest, including coaches, alumni and professors. And they will need the help: final rounds of competitions are often presided over by federal district and circuit court judges¾a truly intense experience! Between 20 and 40 teams from coast to coast typically compete, and the Moot Court Honor Society (MCHS) has extremely high hopes that this will be the most successful year ever.
MCHS is also very excited about the upcoming Monrad Paulsen Competition, Cardozo’s only intramural moot court competition. Cardozo students who are currently preparing their briefs will have the opportunity to distinguish themselves in oral arguments. Those students who successfully advance through the preliminary rounds (presided over by alumni and practitioners) will then have to face an esteemed panel of judges who we are thrilled to have in the finals on November 2nd.
The Cardozo Moot Court Team is already off to a triumphant start for the 2009-2010 moot court competition season. Cardozo finished fifth out of 32 teams in the 28th annual John Marshall Law School International Moot Court Competition in Information Technology and Privacy Law. Additionally, Brian Budnick, 2L took the prize for Second Place Oralist, and Felicia Berenson, 3L, took the prize for Third Place Oralist among the entire competition. Congratulations are in order to the entire team for their success. If this competition is any indication, this year promises to be a victorious one for the Cardozo Moot Court Team.