Annoyed Grad Law Student Mooters
A friend from law school recently was one of the judges for UNSW’s Beginners’ Mooting semi-finals. He was quite stunned by the controversy that moot generated. One side comprised two grad law students who were described as “more cocky than they should have been” (and one who kept mentioning that he worked at Waverley District Court). The case was a Torts one. Among some of the stunts they pulled, was leading off their case on the topic of causation. Which, “with the greatest respect”, is just ridiculous for a moot. Anyway, they ended up losing (by a massive points margin, which wasn’t disclosed to the mooters).
The losing team followed up their defeat with an indignant 4 page letter of complaint, which I found “leaked” here by next year’s Co-President of Lawsoc. It was a fairly impressive, albeit highly dubious and ultimately fruitless, attempt at disputing the validity of the judges’ conduct. (Despite the consistent misspelling of “Waverley” as “Waverly”… I thought they guy worked at that court and he can’t even spell its name?) The response which put a close to the matter was written by Ramona, but not before the mooters had the last word.
Incidentally, Eugene’s site is linked to a rich vein of other blawgs from uni. Hmm, Xanga theme going there. Hmm, goss…
1:10am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
In context of the Xanga comments, especially by one of the judges on the panel – I was once involved in a moot where four out of the five mooters were debaters, and our opponents lost at least partly because the judge (who was a lawyer, not a student) thought one of our opponent mooters was really cocky and arrogant. I’m sure that judges in real life hate arrogance from counsel just as much, and punish it just as much.
I think the main point is to just suck it up. Life isn’t fair, and it didn’t sound like they got particularly shafted.
??? Why am I “vein”??
Huh? Are you confusing “vein” with “vain”?