Kent Law students compete in international moot in Australia

Three Kent Law students have arrived in Australia, ready to compete in the 10th LAWASIA International Moot Competition 2015.

Final year Law LLB students Orestis Anastasiades, Elena Savvidou and Lizzie Virgo are the only team from Europe represented in the competition. The other 18 teams are drawn from institutions across the southern hemisphere, including from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, China, Japan, Indian, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Brazil, Kenya and Australia.

Orestis, Elena and Lizzie flew out to Australia earlier this week, accompanied by the School’s Deputy Director of Mooting Joe Thompson. The international rounds of the moot are being hosted this year by The College of Law in Sydney with the competition due to conclude on Monday 9 November.

LAWASIA is an international organisation of lawyers’ associations, individual lawyers, judges and legal academics in the Asia Pacific region; the chair of its Moot Standing Committee is Kent alumnus Raphael Tay, now a partner at Chooi & Company in Kualar Lumpur.

On its Facebook page, the Moot Standing Committee says it believes mooting to be a critical component of legal education: ‘Mooting offers a systematic training process of the essential skills of problem solving, legal analysis, drafting legal submissions and the development of public speaking. The ability to articulate one’s thoughts and arguments condensing disparate, often conflicting legal authorities into succinct and persuasive arguments is arguably the single most important weaponry in the lawyer’s arsenal.’

The competition is organised in conjunction with the LAWASIA International Conference and many of the conference delegates (who include legal advisers, attorneys and judges) act as moot judges.

This year’s moot problem centres on international law and involves a dispute over an ancient stone statue on display in a museum in Malaysia and which the Government of Nepal has requested be returned.

Memorials for both the claimant and the respondent were submitted by the Kent team in advance of their arrival in Australia with all parties agreeing to resolve the issue under the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration i-Arbitration Rules.

Kent Law School runs an intensive and wide-ranging mooting programme; in recent years the Law School has entered teams in the OUP/BPP Moot, the English Speaking Union Moot, the Jessup International Law Moot, the Oxford French Law Moot, and the UK Student Law Association Moot.

(The Kent team is pictured above during their layover in Hong Kong)