Congratulations to Daniel Cullen and Santosh Carvalho from Birkbeck, University of London, who displayed exceptional mooting skills to take the victory and be crowned winners of the OUP and ICCA National Mooting Competition at the final held at Inner Temple, London, on 28 June 2018. Congratulations should also go to Lewis Aldous who was part of the Birkbeck duo for the first three rounds.
Lady Justice Hallett, Vice-President of the UK Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, presided over this year’s final and allowed the finalists to showcase their advocacy skills by testing their legal knowledge with her interventions. She remarked that all the teams were worthy finalists and that it had been an incredibly difficult task choosing a winner. She went on to say that all the students were welcome in her court any day.
Although the competition is now in its 20th year, Birkbeck is the first team to have won the competition under OUP’s new partnership with the Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA). As a reward for their win, Daniel and Santosh receive £750 each as well as a day marshalling His Honour Judge Anthony Leonard QC at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (The Old Bailey), where they will have the chance to gain a real insight into how judges consider and manage cases.
The fictitious moot problem used in the final focused on tort law and economic loss, involving an expatriate businessman attempting to pay his gambling debts with a counterfeit cheque. The problem was written for the competition by barrister Rosalind Earis, and enabled all the students to shine as advocates.
Congratulations also go to the other three teams that reached the final – Keane Davison and Victoria Taylor representing Queen’s University Belfast; Georgia Palmer and Steven Moore representing Open University; and Robert Shu and Bharat Punjabi representing University College London. To get to this stage, the teams had to win four rounds of the competition, whilst also undertaking university exams and coursework. We send our thanks to them, and all the participants from this year’s competition for their incredible hard work, and also to the coordinators and academics who have coached them.
Santosh Carvalho and Daniel Cullen accepting their trophies from Lady Justice Hallett.
Image courtesy of Oxford University Press and ICCA.
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