Written by: Averroes
Introduction
In this short article, I wanna share with you guys some of the basic tips on mooting. I won't be touching on how to do our oral submission or written memorial as I have done that in three separate videos on my Youtube Channel, Averroes 313.
Here are the tips and I hope they would tremendously help you guys in your mooting!
1) Use of language, intonation and choice of words
When mooting, talking is everything. The court and judges will scrutinise every words that we articulate and the intonation that it carries. We have to pretend that we are actually inside a court and have to maintain good decorum and observe our demeanour.
If not, chances are, we might end up insulting the court or convey a very negative impression of ourselves. Read more books, practice speaking formally but in an engaging way. Tell the court a story and be passionate about it.
Judges are humans too, and they prefer someone who could interact and help them your points and arguments that you would like to adduce. Again, this is very important as most competitions 50% of the marks are based on this, so grab a dictionary, thesaurus, practice talking in front of a mirror or record yourself talking, or even refer to a friend who could talk eloquently and formally to get the hang of it.
2) Extensive Research
My coach always say, #yesterday if we are unable to answer or give our points on a certain premise or question. As mooters and future lawyers, it is important for us to know our grounds, legal arguments and points inside and outside.
We have to research and constantly do so while we still have the opportunity and time before the actual competition. Once we are prepared and ready, then there won't be much hassle or problems when it comes to mooting!
If we are participating in local moot competitions, we can always refer to Lexis Nexis, CLJ Net or Google Scholar. If it involves international laws, then other online databases may be used, such as ScienceDirect, JSTOR, EmeraldInsight, Academica, Researchgate just to name a few.
3) Enhance our self-confidence or fake it
The saying goes, fake it till you make it or have you ever heard of, if we're not confident of ourselves then how are others going to be confident in us?
That's how the world operates. We have to sell ourselves and our products to get people's attention so that they perceive us as a trustworthy and credible person. I do agree that as humans, we have our own insecurities and we tend to be nervous at times.
This is especially true, when the judges asks us difficult questions and we are left stuttering and mumbling. However, in such situation, if we have already done all we can and the questions seem a bit off, we have no other choice but to come up with answers.
Those answers have to be rational and logic in a way to convince them and pretend that you are confident about it. In dire situations as that, it may be wrong to fabricate arguments up, but trust your instincts, gut feeling and intuition if there are no other alternatives.
As long as you can 'show' that you are confident, that is all that matters. If it is right or wrong, that is a different story and we can still learn from our mistakes afterwards.
4) Practice and repetition
I advocate for this as continuous training and acclimatizing ourselves with mooting is essential to be better. I have never heard of anyone who has never trained or practiced before. Practice makes perfect!
Learning a certain skill or talent takes time, we can't expect ourselves to become the most profound mooter there is in a day or night. It takes dedication, time and patience.
Among many ways to train is that, gather with your team mates and coach and conduct training sessions on intervals or on a fixed schedule. If possible, you could record the entire training and watch from the mistakes that we have committed.
In the meantime, my coach will always jot down notes during our trainings, from the questions he asks and the answers we give. He will then photo copy the notes and send them to Telegram where we can download and review over the notes again to see what we could improve on.
Apart from that, we could also be the judges during training and ask our team mates question. When we always ask questions and get familiarized with it, then during the actual competition, we will be mind-boggled that the questions asked during training came up during the actual competition.
Could you believe that!?
Lastly, during training, don't forget to time yourself because each competitions has their time limits and usually it is 15 minutes per person. If we exceed that, we might get our marks deducted. So focus only on our main arguments and points and no need to explain every detail while mooting.
Conclusion
I hope this article was beneficial to you and in any moot competitions or mooting occasions that you guys will be having in the future. Till next time see ya guys then and if you have any questions, suggestions or comments please do let me know.
I can be reached on my LinkedIn and email at amanullahawesome@gmail.com. Have a fantastic day ahead guys and stay awesome! Peace!
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