The ELSA

Organising ELSA Bucharest’s Beleiu MootCourt CompetitionDenisa AlexandroaieiELSA RomaniaWhen ELSA Bucharest started to organise its moot court competitionwe knew about the large amount of work, most of itbehind the scenes, that was awaiting us. We also thoughtabout one of the advices from a mooting training manual:‘Watch out! The biggest problem for the organiser is the people!People who fail to respond to messages, who do not turnup on time or drop out at the last minute are the scourge of allmooting competitions. Finding people who are willing tojudge moots is often a nightmarish problem.We kept this in mind, seeing the goodside of all of this, namely, watchingmooters perform in a competition wearranged could be very rewarding.Watching others is also useful toimprove your own mooting skills. And,of course, it is great for developingthose skills, which are deemed so valuablewhen applying for jobs.With all this in mind we started. Therewere a lot of issues to think about: Theacademic part, the logistical part, marketing,finding participants andfundraising. In a brainstorming of themembers of the Organising Committeewe established rules for us, for the membersof the jury and for the participants.We were so enchanted about the resultsthat we printed the outcome and send itto the participants together with thecase and to the members of the jury. Themost important rules for the OC wereput on the wall to keep them in mind allthe time.If the selection of the participants, atleast for the written part, was not a realproblem since the universities from allover the country did it for us, the selectionof the members of the jury was adifficult job. We wanted the Dean of theBucharest Law School as head of thejury, which is not an easy task since hewas very occupied. So we first spokewith some very appreciated seminartutors to become members of the jury.When they confirmed their participation,we went to the Dean and convincedhim - it was for the prestige ofour university!It seemed for us that the most difficultpart of organising the moot court wasdone. But it was not quite like this.Especially because the oral final still hadto take place, where the participantsshould prove their oral aptitude toresolve the case. We told them to alwaysbear in mind that their goal was not toprimarily engage in a clever intellectualdebate, but to persuade the court thattheir client's position was the strongerone in law.We managed to obtain the amphitheatreof our faculty, but for the final wewanted one of the rooms of the court.Luckily we found a very enthusiastic OCmember who patiently dealt with all thepaper work necessary to obtain such.The big day had come and the participantsarrived in Bucharest. We gavethem the rules for the oral rounds of themoot court, we informed them aboutthe timing for their pleadings and thepenalties for exceeding it, and we letthem rest for the day after, the day ofthe final.The day was coming and everythingstarted. Once the judges appeared, theaudience in the court stood up. ‘May itplease Your Honour, my name is Popescuand I appear for the appellant.’We considered it being a good start -and it was.ELSA Germany’s Moot Court CompetitionELSA Germany has a longerhistory of mooting – havingfirst organised its nationalmoot court competition oncivil law in 1993.10ELSA Germany has a longer history ofmooting – having first organised itsnational moot court competition on civillaw in 1993.More than 20 teams participate eachyear in the local rounds – which areopen to all law faculties in Germany. Thewinners will proceed to regional rounds,where the champions of the North andSouth of Germany will be declared.These two teams will then compete infront of the Supreme Court (BGH) forthe title of national champions. Thebench is composed of professors, judgesand lawyers, who will score the teamsbased on criteria such as persuasiveness,knowledge of facts, tactical and rhetoricalskills or clarity.Patrons of the ELSA Germany MootCourt Competition are Prof. Dr. Medicus,Prof. Dr. Schaller and DeutscherAnwaltsverein (DAV). It is supported bythe ZEIT Stiftung as well as numerouslegal papers and reviews.