That's Done

The moot court competition is over. Thank goodness. It's fun if your judges seem to like you (as indicated by their post-round feedback, not necessarily their questions during the round), but not so fun when the judges clearly don't like you (or your arguments).

It turns out, despite what Tom Petty might say, the waiting isn't the hardest part. The hardest part is dealing with a practicing attorney who's pretending to be a judge but who has not prepared nearly enough and who does not understand the statute at issue in your argument. It's also hard when your panel of judges tells you to begin, and while you're painstakingly laying out your argument, the judges proceed to ignore you while they have a little mini-conference about which one of them is supposed to be keeping time. Finally, the waiting is hard. Round two for me was this morning at 9 a.m., so I had to wait from about 9:40 to 1:30 to learn if I was going to the final round, then wait another hour for the final round to begin, then wait an extra five minutes for judge three (also a practicing attorney, also demonstrably lacking in familiarity with the issues and cases you're arguing about) to park his car.

After all that, I'd say the chance that I made the board is about 10%. But hey, it was good fun, I learned a bit, and at least two out of four panels of judges really liked my argument, so it's all good.

Posted 04:00 PM | Comments (1) | law school

Moot Wait

GW's annual first year Moot Court competition is currently, at this very moment, nearing its final round. This year the competition is being run in tournament format. Preliminary rounds were yesterday, semi-finals were this morning, and now the law school is all aflutter with nervous, business-suited 1Ls waiting to hear whether they're advancing to the final round.

Too bad GW didn't build a nice sound system into the student lounges when they remodeled last summer. Now would be a great time for a little Tom Petty.

Posted 11:48 AM | law school