The Moot Court Advisor's Handbook

Book excerpt: Perhaps you are a law professor who has just been asked to advise a moot court team. Or maybe you teach an appellate advocacy course or run an internal moot court competition. You might be an attorney recruited by the law school to coach a team, or a student preparing to serve on your school's moot court board. Or--lucky you--your school's entire moot court program might have just been dropped in your lap. Whatever your role, congratulations! Moot court and other legal skills competitions can be among the most rewarding experiences law school offers, both for the students and for the coach or professor. No matter what your role or level of experience, the Legal Writing Institute's Moot Court Advisor's Handbook is designed to be a resource of sound advice and best practices for running moot court and other legal skills competitions. With chapters on administering a moot court program, running an internal moot court competition, coaching teams at external moot court competitions, and running your own external moot court competition, this handbook also includes several model documents that you can use to create your own competition rules, program bylaws, judge training materials, competition scoring rubrics, and more. Drawing on the combined expertise of the Legal Writing Institute's Moot Court Committee, this handbook can be your soup-to-nuts manual for building and administering a moot court program, a handy reference guide for the moot court newbie, or anything in between.