The Moot Court Board oversees the administration of moot court trial and appellate cases, as well as several moot court competitions, including the Steen, Reynolds, and Dalehite trial competition each fall and the McGlinchey Stafford oral advocacy competition each spring. Members are selected through a competitive process requiring written and oral presentations. Unique to our program is the board’s publication, Mississippi Review of First Impressions. Each year, board members prepare bench memos on undecided issues of law currently pending before the judiciary. The most outstanding of these memos is selected for publication in the Review.
Instituted more than 140 years ago by William Forbes Stearn,
the Law School’s first professor, moot court prepares law students
for the practice of law by providing experience and training in the preparation
and conduct of cases in both trial and appellate courts. Today, the presentation
of both trial and appellate cases in moot court remains an integral and
required component of the curriculum.
The student Moot Court Board oversees the organization and
administration of the program with faculty members, judges, and practitioners
serving as judges and evaluators. Designed to ensure that all students
gain trial experience while in school, the program duplicates as closely
as possible a real courtroom experience. During mock trials, students
present opening and closing statements, question witnesses, and address
the objections of opposing counsel.
“It can take one or two years before you see a courtroom as an associate. My first time to argue in front of a judge was in a criminal case, and I realized it was not much different from my moot court experience,” said Grady Tollison III, partner with the Tollison law firm in Oxford.
The University of Mississippi School of Law has a long tradition of active
participation in national moot court competitions, where the best student
teams from other law schools in the region and the nation compete for
team and individual honors. These competitions include the prestigious
National Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the Bar of the City of New
York, and a number of specialized competitions in international, bankruptcy,
trademark, and environmental law.
Our tradition of excellence in this area culminated in the recent crowning of the Law School’s Trademark Law Moot Court Team as 1999 national champions in the Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition in Washington, D.C. This outstanding team also won the national award for Best Oral Advocates and the Best Brief Award for the Southern Region. Commenting on the Law School’s commitment to excellence in advocacy training, team coach Professor Gary Myers said, “The Law School’s national championship in this competition highlights both its strength in the intellectual property field and its emphasis on litigation and advocacy skills.”
