Team – National Law University Odisha (NLUO)
Citation – Best Memorials – Both Claimant and Respondent
Mooting is an art. Well, this might sound a bit rosy but each time one picks up a moot, it is an unprecedented experience. When I picked up this moot, I had no idea about arbitration. But as they say, there is always a start for everything. Thus, in order for us to actually understand Arbitration from its roots, I along with my entire team started our pre-readings at a considerable time before the actual competition. We used to set internal targets in order to keep on track.
PREPARATION OF THE MEMORIALS
Our moot proposition consisted of 40 pages, thus reading it daily used to take a considerate amount of time from our daily research. The moot proposition pertained to a contract, an addendum to the contract, emails exchanged between the parties and other incidental documents that form a part of normal practice in the field of arbitration.
The problem was in the form of statement of claim and statement of defense, so making the first structure of the arguments was inspired from there itself. As the research prolonged to 16-18 hours daily, we started finding better arguments. We switched the issues between ourselves so as to keep checks and balances amongst the team and varied views on all issues.
After a point of time, we had covered all the relevant points as to a particular issue then we arranged those to make one coherent whole. We realized that we had exceeded the page limit by a great margin. This was however, our first draft and we showed this draft to some of our seniors for guidance and meanwhile tried to get our arguments in the page limit expected out of us. After all our arguments were finalized, we read our arguments line by line, word by word in order to shorten it and to make the most sense of it in words as simple as possible. A funny reminisce from my experience is as to how we used to fight amongst ourselves in order to get maximum pages for our own issues. After a lot of negotiations, editing and sleepless nights, we somehow managed to get our arguments advanced within the page limit set by our moot rules for both the memorials.
Once we were through with our memorials, we read the entire matter again to check for uniformity, grammatical mistakes and for any other colloquial errors. We got the same checked from our batch-mates and seniors too. After all these, the final drafts from both sides were formatted, our memorials prima facie looked more presentable and formal which is exactly what was required. We submitted our memorial at 11.50 p.m, so it was a thrill ride in itself.
ORAL ROUNDS
Since our memorial submission deadline got extended twice, we were left with just a week or so to prepare for our oral rounds. We somehow managed to give 7-8 rounds from each side to our seniors and got our compendium ready from both sides.
Then came the D-day. I have to admit I was panicked to my wits. But my team calmed me down and made me realize how far we had come. Thus, having a compatible team remains the key for all moot court competition. Our first round at preliminary level was quite enriching. Almost all the questions asked by the judges landed them into some or the other case of our compendium. Our learned opponents did not carry a compendium with them and preferred to answer the questions orally without many authorities. We won both the preliminary rounds, one by a margin of 9-0 and other by the margin of 5.5-3.5. But in order to qualify for the quarterfinals, one had to win both the rounds by 9-0. Hence, we did not make the cut. That day I realized that moot not only involves hard work but also involves luck.
OVERALL EXPERIENCE
We were quite disheartened to not qualify for the quarterfinals, given how good both of our rounds were. But all our pain faded away when the organizers announced that we had bagged Best Memorial for Claimants. Pleased as punch, we had almost descended the stage when they announced that we also won Best Memorial from the Respondent side.
In the end, moot not only enriches you with the legal aspects of your moot problem but also enriches you with life lessons- to never give up and be consistent in your efforts. Most of all, it teaches you the importance of team-work and how even a distorted team can change its stars by cooperation and keeping their eyes on the prize.
Authors – Palak Agrawal, Farhana Akhtar, Palak Aggarwal and Darshit Sidhabhatti, students of National Law University Odisha.
ACE Memorial